Biography
Born in the village Ellinikon of Ioannina on February 3, 1942, to a grocery store owner father and a housewife mother (a portrait of her is displayed in the sculptor’s museum alongside significant portraits of prominent figures he has created), Theodoros Papagiannis was exposed from a young age to the work of the masters of Epirus, particularly the renowned stone masons from Tzoumerka and Konitsa. He worked for a summer as an assistant to one of these folk masters (with the surname Zikas, from a large family of stone masons, among whom were Giannis and Kostas, both prominent) and learned to carve stone while helping to build the cobblestone paths of his village. After obsessively carving stones he found in the natural landscape of his unique homeland for a year—when his father had sent him to herd sheep as punishment for his disobedience at the strict school he attended before even starting high school—he displayed the heads he sculpted in the window of his father’s grocery store. This impressed an agronomist from Ioannina who visited the village and encouraged the family to support him in pursuing art professionally. At the Zosimaia School in Ioannina, where he attended his early high school years, his teachers quickly recognized his talent, and before finishing school, he found himself a student at the Athens School of Fine Arts (ASFA) in 1961, passing the entrance exams as a talented applicant and attending the sculpture workshop of Giannis Pappas (1913-2005). In Athens, he also completed his night high school studies. He graduated in 1966 and received a diploma in bronze casting and plaster techniques from the Applied Arts workshop under Professor Nikos Kerlis. In 1967, he won a scholarship from the Institute of State Scholarships (I.K.Y.) for a three-year program, a form of doctoral research, to study ancient Greek art in the Mediterranean, traveling to numerous archaeological sites in Asia Minor, Egypt, Cyprus, Southern Italy, Sicily, Crete, and other Aegean islands, which significantly shaped his artistic perspective.[1] In 1970, he began teaching at ASFA with the establishment of the assistant positions, invited by his former teacher G. Pappas, whom he succeeded as a professor at ASFA (he retired in 1978). In 1974, he was one of the founders of the Center for Visual Arts (K.E.T.). In 1975, after a competition, he took on the commission to design the representations of Pericles, Democritus, and Aristotle for the twenty, ten, and fifty drachma coins.[2] In 1981-82, he pursued further training in Paris at the École Nationale des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d’Art, where he distinguished himself among the students with his works.[3] In 1996-97, he spent six months in New York studying educational programs and organizing sculpture workshops. As a professor at ASFA, he collaborated with many major Fine Arts Schools in Europe (Berlin, Bologna, Paris, Milan-Brella) through the Erasmus program.
In 2009, upon his retirement, he founded the “Theodoros Papagiannis Sculpture Museum” in Greek Ioannina, in a large building that was constructed with funds from the benefactor Nikolaos Mantelopoulos, his fellow villager, which housed the old school. For the past twenty years, he has organized symposiums with other sculptor colleagues and students across Greece and Cyprus, creating sculptures on-site that then adorn the public spaces where they are made. As part of some of these gatherings, he has decorated the five-kilometer road connecting his museum to the historic Monastery of Tsouka with numerous sculptures now scattered along this unique route. In 2010, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Ioannina. In 2011, he won an international competition among 250 participants for the monumental sculpture “Runners,” which is installed at the exit of Chicago’s Airport. He was honored with the highest rank of the Order of the Phoenix in 2015 by the President of the Republic and with the Silver Medal (the highest distinction of the Foundation) in the Class of Letters and Fine Arts from the Academy of Athens in 2019. The 10th Gymnasium of Ioannina has borne his name honorifically since 2017. His works are located in numerous public spaces, having completed iconic sculptures (at the University of Patras in 1996 and at the University of Ioannina), thematic monumental pieces (for the Unknown Teacher at the Pedagogical Academy of Ioannina and the Monument of the Greek Teacher in Madrid Square behind the Hilton in 2000; “Couple” in Kalamata that same year, in Limassol in 1999, and in the lakeside area of Ioannina in 1996; “Birds” in Amaliada in 2006 and at the central fountain of Arta in 2023; “Marathon Runners” in Dionysus Penteli in 2004 and “Citizen Torchbearer” in the Municipality of Metamorfosi that same year; a monument for M. Katrakis in Kissamos, Crete), with themes from ancient Greece (“Sappho” in Ereso in 2006 and “Orpheus” in Katerini the same year), as well as dozens of busts across Greece (of Olympios Georgakis in Koukaki in 1970, of Alexandros Symeonidis outside the Theagenio in 1977, of Konstantinos Oikonomou in the Square of the Great School of the Nation in 1991, of Georgios Rizakis in the courtyard of St. George’s Church in 1994, of Angelos Terzakis in the courtyard of the Cultural Center of the Municipality of Athens in 2000—this one was stolen in 2016—of Panagiotis Anagnostopoulos in Filiki Eteria Square in Kolonaki that same year, of Giorgos Seferis near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2001, and many others), as well as statues (Nikolaos Plastiras in Nea Erythraia in 1978, Eleftherios Venizelos in the Central Square of Ioannina in 1985, Angelis Govios in Psachna, Evia), as well as numerous medals. He also won First Prize in the competition for the National Resistance Monument in Armyros, Volos (1985), First Prize in the competition for the Polytechnic Uprising Monument in Ioannina (1985), and First Prize in the competition for the National Resistance Monument in Metamorfosi, Attica (1992). He has organized over 50 solo exhibitions, with his 2012 exhibition “Ghosts” at the Piraeus building of the Benaki Museum standing out, as well as his exhibition at the Byzantine Museum in Athens the same year and another in 2021 at the Byzantine Museum of Thessaloniki, and he has participated in dozens of group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. His works are housed in the National Gallery, the Vore Museum, the Pieridis Gallery, the Thessaloniki Museum, the Gallery of the Educational Foundation of National Bank (MIET), the Municipal Gallery of Rhodes, the Municipal Gallery of Patras, the Florina Gallery, the Averoff Gallery in Metsovo, the Kouvoutsaki Gallery in Kifisia, the National Sculpture Gallery, the Presidential Palace, and many private collections, among others.
The work of Th. Papagiannis has an experiential foundation and constantly engages with the history of his homeland, both its emblematic ancient Greek heritage and the unrecorded history of its people. He addresses fundamental issues of existence and does not hesitate to confront the enduring difficulties of his homeland, such as those of exile and survival, often creating works that focus on bread and migration, while also wanting to immortalize the figures of those “extraordinary people who aged badly in exile,” as he emphasizes.[4] At his museum, four central themes are highlighted: bread, learning, philanthropy, and the immigrant. Th. Papagiannis places particular emphasis on drawing, which continually nourishes his sculpture, deepening through it into life and nature, thus freeing his sculptures through design in space.[5] After the Polytechnic fire during the events of November 1991, he sought a way to exorcise the evil, recreating the ashes of the Polytechnic to create monumental sculptures, his “ghosts,” forming scarecrow-like figures of supernatural size that simultaneously exude a totemic grandeur and a simple archaic quality. He accompanies that installation with an angry text, inspired by the events and the cultural decline he experienced through them.[6] The remnants from the fire, which he collected until they were buried by the relevant authorities,[7] he continues to use today to create his offerings and totems, combining them with other industrial materials, achieving a bold sculptural proposal through recycling materials. As he emphasizes: “I do not know from how far these forms come. I do not know what exactly they express, whether they are gods or demons, mythical figures or heroes of History, popular fighters or spiritual people, national benefactors or teachers of the Nation, ghosts of the mind or nightmares. They might be something of all these.”[8] At the same time, he works on hundreds of small-scale forms, reviving the collective element through intricately colored and geometrically refined forms from recent and older history, which often exhibit an archetypal tendency. The materials of his sculpture are diverse, such as clay, metals, wood, polyesters, ropes, nails, wires, brass, stones, and marbles. Through their combination, such as the blending of marbles of different origins, he manages to give a chromatic tone to his forms and create a distinctive sculptural style that characterizes him.[9] His works, while firmly rooted in the past, also belong to the expressionist trend of post-war abstraction, especially his tectonic sculptures, which are also described as “post-cubist.”[10] One of his most fundamental themes, which is highlighted as mentioned in his museum, is bread; he considers it a symbol of human survival, as he famously writes: “’it allows man to become civilized,’ we read in the epic of Gilgamesh.” The sculptor dialogues with and revives tradition through the elevation of everyday objects and tools. As the researcher Flavia Nessi-Yazitzioglou emphasizes, “the tradition of exalting the inanimate object presupposes human presence, and in this way, Papagiannis integrates into the history of contemporary art.”[11] Chrysanthos Christou expresses succinctly that the sculptor: “transforms his visions, as well as his experiences and encounters with the world and life, into forms that have universal extensions.” Meanwhile, Katia Kilesopoulou successfully traces his effort to combat the spiritual disconnection of his time: “In an era of collapse and annihilation of the sacred, the artist, by awakening consciences, sanctifies in his creations what is most vital for human life.” Finally, his great teacher Giannis Pappas identifies the following characteristics: “Sharp gaze, skillful hand, resilience in concentration, lightness in persistence, imagination and determination (…) vigilant consciousness (…) humility and selflessness.”
Anestis Melidonis
Art Historian
Scientific Collaborator of the Hellenic Diaspora Foundation
[1] He himself stated: “That era marked me. When you engage with the art of antiquity, you are captivated; you see its grandeur in depth, and it’s hard for lesser quality things to influence you. It’s unimaginable how far the people of antiquity reached. They saw life in depth, transformed it with wisdom, and made it art.” (See Nektaria Zagorianakou, “Theodoros Papagiannis: The Epirus teacher who brought art into the life of the citizen,” Athens Voice, 8/2/2019).
[2] Gerakina N. Milona, “Representations of Aristotle in Modern Greek Art,” Makedonika, vol. 28, p. 376.
[3] At the exhibition of the Association of Greek Students at the Greek pavilion of the University Campus (see Evridiki Trichon-Milsani, “Critical comments on the exhibitions,” Visual Arts, July-August 1982, p. 61).
[4] Museum of Contemporary Art “Theodoros Papagiannis,” Greek – Ioannina, Municipality of Kastanohoria 2009, from the artist’s preface.
[5] As his close friend Th. Papagiannis and prominent diaspora sculptor Kostas Andreou emphasizes regarding drawing: “It is the foundation and the starting point that opens the door to the phenomenon of creation in future work.” (Kostas Andreou 1917-2008. “Post-Mortem,” Eugenides Foundation 2009).
[6] He would write: “I extracted the Black from my soul, which for years has been watered by all kinds of arsonists. I raised symbols of the decay of a world that tears itself apart and a homeland that seems to have no future.”
[7] See his statements: “They took the rubble and moved it to a stream in the Zografou University Campus. And I went there constantly. I would take it out of the stream, I saved it. Until one day they covered it with soil. They buried the remnants of the destruction with soil. They buried our guilt with soil.” (Nektaria Zagorianakou, op. cit.).
[8] See “Papagiannis’ supernatural totems at the Oil Museum of the Piraeus Cultural Foundation,” iefimerida.gr, 30/6/2017.
[9] Moreover, in ancient Greek art, color was used in sculpture as well.
[10] Marina Lambraki-Plaka, “Theodoros Papagiannis. Contemporary sculpture with a scent of antiquity,” op. cit.
[11] From the text “The Bloseura, the Vessel, and the Hull,” in op. cit.