Homenaje a Eleni (Tribute to Eleni)

Dimitris Perdikidis was born in 1922 in Piraeus. He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts with K. Parthenis, O. Argyros and N. Georgiades. With a scholarship from the Spanish government, he continued his studies at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid (1953-1956), where he lived for the next three decades. His early works explored the structure of the image in a figurative painting with symbolic references, but in the 1960s he turned to abstract expressionist art, forming a personal visual writing based on gestural intensity and the use of mixed materials. After the mid-1960s his work acquired a political dimension and turned towards the current of critical realism, creating compositions in which he incorporated photographs from international and Greek current affairs, which he structured in a constructivist arrangement. His return to Greece also marks his return to abstraction, emphasizing the function of form and multifaceted compositions. His work has been honoured with awards and distinctions: First Prize of the Madrid School of Graphic Arts (1958), First Prize of the Association of Spanish Art Critics (1961) and a silver medal at the Exhibition for the International Prize for Abstract Art in Lausanne (1961). He has presented his work in more than twenty solo exhibitions in Europe and America, while in 2002 the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art organized a major retrospective exhibition of his work in Thessaloniki. He participated in many group exhibitions and represented Spain in international events such as the Sao Paulo Biennale (1961) and the Venice Biennale (1964 and 1966). He also participated in the Europalia (Belgium, 1982). He died in 1989 in Athens.