Stelios faitakis biography for kids pictures

Stelios Faitakis comes up with some pretty odd characters. A Japanese goth in kabuki-style make-up plays keyboard above a unruly group of onlookers who are perched on a life-sized chessboard; an anguished military man gnaws on his own hand amongst the brambles and piles of sand in an otherworldly desert. All are eerie and vaguely unsettling, but the artist makes each of them somewhat divine by washing them in liquid gold.

Stelios Faitakis was a Greek painter and graffiti artist.

Faitakis himself is all about reconciling difference and placing divergent ideas within an all-embracing, mystical philosophy. Born in Athens, his parents both worked in a gold-chain factory perhaps the source of a life-long obsession with the precious metal? They were laid off when the factory closed and began to produce silver jewelry out of their home.

After high school, he managed to fall into art school after a friend entered one of his drawings into a school contest without his permission. A somewhat withdrawn child, Faitakis found the idea of studying art as thrilling as his parents found it unwise. He did win the battle, however, and in entered the School of Fine Arts in Salonica, a city of a half-million and the capital of Greek Macedonia.

He later transferred to the School of Fine Arts in Athens, from which he graduated in This drive to maintain contact with the public inspires him to paint not only on canvas for gallery shows but on buildings and even in hotel lobbies. Around the time that he discovered graffiti, Faitakis developed an interest in a few less orthodox hobbies for modern artists: the Japanese martial art of Ninjitsu and a whole slew of mystical and religious traditions including Osteopathy an alternative medical school based on the musculoskeletal system and Qi Gong an aspect of Chinese medicine focused on breathing and series of flowing poses.

My name is Stelios Faitakis, I am a painter, I live and work in Athens.

A self-described anarchist, Faitakis describes the political aspects of his paintings apparent in his regular use of warplanes, weapons, and men in uniform, particularly in his more recent pieces as quite general despite the explicit imagery. So, in my work, simple, ordinary colors coexist with metallic, light-reflecting colors in one complete world.

With such high-flying language and spirituality, one suspects that Faitakis believes he is acting out a divine decree by creating his pieces. But this is not at all the case.