Vietnam

Dimosthenis Kokkinidis was born in 1929 in Piraeus. He started studying economics at the Athens School of Economics, but soon abandoned it to devote himself to art. He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1952-1957) under the tutelage of Spyros Papaloukas and Yannis Moralis. As head of the art department of the EOEX (1959-61) he was involved in the exploitation of island pottery. In the 1960s he developed significant activity as a founding member of the 'Art Group A' and the 'Tomi' group and in 1974 he was a founding member of the 'Group for Communication and Education in Art'. He was a Ford Foundation Fellow. In 1976, he was elected a full professor of painting at the ASFA, where he taught until 1997, and served as dean of the School in 1980-82. He was also involved in sculpture, but also in a wide range of theoretical issues relating to art and aesthetics, with publications, conference papers and translations. Colour, vivid and intense, plays a decisive expressive role in the whole of his work, which moves in the field of abstract figuration. During the 1960s and 1970s his works were a critical commentary on current historical reality. From the late 1980s, his direct reference to political issues ceases and his themes focus on the human need to communicate with his peers and with nature, while at the same time the artist tests his potential in plastic art. The works of the last period of his artistic career are dominated by commentaries on the timelessness of the Greek environment, drawing on mythology and literature. He held dozens of solo exhibitions in various cities in Greece and participated in many group exhibitions [Tre Grekiska Utstallningar (Stockholm, 1978), Europalia (Brussels, 1982), Metamorphoses of Modernism (Athens, 1992), etc.]. In 1989 a retrospective exhibition of his work was organized by the M.K.S.T. and in 2007 a monograph of his work was published. He died in Athens in 2020.