STAVROS PANAGIOTAKIS
Stavros was about five years old when he painted for the first time with his friend’s watercolors after school. Before he even knew, he spent his afternoon painting.
by Dimitra Dimitriou
He studied painting at the Berlin School of Fine Arts. Then he studied in the engraving and sculpture workshops. He has become a professor of visual arts and today he is a holder of PhD at Aristotle University’s Department of Fine Arts. His painting talent is revealed through his hundreds of exhibitions around the world. He believes that his creative ability wasn’t recognized at school by the teachers when all of his books had sketches, thus this may had helped him to focus more passionately on painting.
One of his works that interest me are the senses bottles. His struggle to leave something behind if the human kind ever got vanished.
He characterizes his atelier as an emergency hiding place. It is necessary for an artist to have a personal space, but above all, calmness for the inspiration of each creation. He was photographed in his own hideout by Dimitris Andritsos, among his colors, paintings and palettes. Behind me stands a genealogical tree in threads – so it doesn’t stop moving. That’s the way that Stavros Panagiotaki’s works acquire life. His works are based on reality. Love, life and death is the labyrinth through the realities that affect us daily, being influenced by many different visual stimuli.
A walk at the Port of Thessaloniki will lead you to one of his works, in collaboration with the architect Kiki Oudatzi, which symbolizes seagull wings.
