Microcosm C’

Nikos Sachinis was born in 1924 in Thessaloniki and took his first painting lessons with Polykleitos Regos. He studied economics and law at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (graduated in 1948) and was taught painting and printmaking as well as the use of new materials in 1949-51 by the American artists R. Moyer and G. Perret. In the period 1956-59 he worked as an assistant in the free drawing course of the Department of Architecture of the Polytechnic School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, while in 1962-84 he worked as a set designer and costume designer with the National Theatre of Athens. In 1970 he was elected professor of free drawing, and then director of the School of Visual Arts at the Polytechnic School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki until his death in 1989. He taught set design and image aesthetics at a theatre and film school. In 1984 he was a founding member and first president of the Association of Artists of Visual Arts of Northern Greece (SKETBE). Alongside painting, he was involved in illustrating books, advertising material and posters. The themes of his works include still lifes, landscapes, nude portraits. From the 1950s he used paper and his first works were in the collage technique. Then the compositions became more abstract with strong schematization, while his stimuli of images and objects from his environment are sometimes incorporated as such. During the dictatorship he creates works of protest and commentary on the social and political conditions of the time, and refuses to take part in the Venice Biennale. After the mid-1970s, he creates compositions by projecting drawings and imprinting them on light-sensitive canvas, and completes them using collage and colour.