Biography
Yannis Bouteas was born in Kalamata in 1941. Since his school years, he leaned towards art, advancing his skills by apprenticing alongside craftsmen, while trying to raise money in order to pursue his studies at the Athens School of Fine Arts. During the period 1957-1959, he attended courses in the tutoring center of Panagiotis Sarafianos and, from 1959 to 1964, he studied engraving with a state scholarship at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Kostas Grammatopoulos. He continued his studies with a scholarship from the Greek State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) in Paris (École des Beaux-Arts 1966-1970). From 1972 to 1982, he lived and worked in Paris. Since his first solo exhibition at the Athens Art Gallery in 1972, he has been using neon lighting along with everyday materials like rope as well as materials collected from the street, such as tinplates, pieces of wood and tarmac. In his practice, he combines the rigorous and geometrically structured placement of industrial materials with the seemingly random use of flexible or of indefinable shape objects on which the trace of the artist's intervention is imprinted. The installations and constructions that result from this process transform their exhibition space and, despite their conceptual origins, have a direct and experiential effect on the viewer. He has presented his work at solo exhibitions in Greece and France and has participated in numerous group exhibitions throughout Europe. In 1976, he participated in the unique exhibition of the short-lived group Processes/Systems. In 1977 and 1978, he participated in the important group exhibitions Mito e Realta, Artisti Greci Contemporanei and Avanguardia e Sperimentazione organized by curator Effie Strouza in Bari, Modena and Venice. He represented Greece at the 16th São Paulo Biennale in 1981 and at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990, along with George Lappas. In 1992, he participated in the large exhibition of the National Gallery Metamorphoses of the Modern: The Greek experience. In 2004, a large retrospective exhibition of his was held at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki entitled States in Flux 1970-2004. His works can be found in many private and public collections such as at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum, Alpha Bank's collection and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete. In 2007, he created the installation Layerings-Energy Images XVI for “Kerameikos” metro station. He lives and works in Athens.