Untitled

Daniel (Panagopoulos) was born in 1924 in Pyrgos, Ilia. He initially began his studies in medicine (1943-1944), which he quickly abandoned in order to study painting at the A.S.K.T. with K. Parthenis (1944-1947). In 1954, having obtained a three-year scholarship to continue his studies in painting and mosaics, he went to Paris, where he stayed and worked for a long period of his life. His stay in France gave him the opportunity to come into contact with contemporary currents, especially abstract art. From the early 1960s he expanded into three-dimensional works, primarily constructions, but he continued to consider himself a painter. He used everyday, cheap materials, cardboard boxes to create his famous series of works "Boxes", which were the artist's commentary on the question of representation and depth in particular. In the late 1960s he proposed electric, visually-moving works, using electric light and inserting arrows or cut-out paper human figures into his boxes. The result, which had an accentuated playfulness, was also a critical commentary on contemporary technological culture. In the 1970s Daniel returned to wall paintings. He used cardboard on whose surface he carved sections with a knife, allowing the 'white light' of the wall to penetrate the composition, while a system of colour underlining completed the sets. The cardboard was then replaced by burlap, which was sketched and frayed. Color was gradually minimized, but his work continued to emphasize gesture, rhythm, movement, and tonal gradations of color. He held more than twenty solo exhibitions in Paris, London, Madrid, Athens, Thessaloniki, Pyrgos, Athens, Thessaloniki, etc. He participated in many group exhibitions and important international events, such as the Sao Paulo Biennale (1965), the Salon de Mai (Paris, 1968-71), the Grands et Jeunes d' Aujourd'hui (Paris, 1974-78), the Europalia (Brussels, 1982), the Istanbul Biennale (1992), etc, While the exhibition organized by Pierre Restany in Venice entitled "Three proposals for a new Greek sculpture" in the context of the 1964 Biennale, which included Daniel, V. Kaniaris and N. Kessanlis, was a breakthrough for contemporary Greek art. Alongside his artistic work he was involved in writing texts and books on contemporary art. He died in 2008 in Pyrgos, Ilia.