Still life with Geranium

Iro Kanakaki was born in 1945 in Piraeus. She studied printmaking at the A.S.K.T. with K. Grammatopoulou (1965-1969) and during the period 1973-1975 she studied screen printing at the Croydon College of Art in London. Her joining the left during her student years led her - with the imposition of the dictatorship - to her arrest and exile in Gyaros, where Vaso Katraki was also located. The works of this period move in the spirit of critical realism, commenting on contemporary social and political reality, which is plagued by illusory affluence, the excesses of advertising, consumerism and the role of the mass media. Still lifes with flowers and fabrics are a frequent subject matter that she deals with and returns to at various stages of her artistic career. She incorporates surrealist forms and symbols into her compositions, attempting a poetic, lyrical approach. Gradually her work becomes more abstract, the colours more violent and often the limitations of the plate are abolished by the assemblages of various materials. Upon her return to Greece in 1989, she settled in Athens and taught drawing at the Vakalo School. She presented her work in eleven solo exhibitions, with two more held the year after her death. She participated in several group exhibitions including: Panhellenic (1975), Paris Biennale (1980), etc. She died in Athens in 1997.