Constantin Xenakis (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Ξενάκης) (28 December 1931 – 6 June 2020) was a Greek artist based in France.

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He was born in Cairo. He spent his career in Paris  since 1955, were in 1967 Graduated from Ecole Supérieure des Arts Modernes with a degree in «Interior Design and Architecture».
During the period 1957-61 he studied painting in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris and Notre-Dame des Champs, Paris with H. Goetz 

 

In 1996. He began working and living both in Paris and Athens.

He was made a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1986. In 1996 he was awarded the Prix Delmas by the Institut de France, at the recommendation of the French Academy of Fine Arts.

In the course of his long quest, he had succeeded in combining art with technology, spontaneity together with style, yesterday with today, poetry with rationalism, thus, creating images that allow us to witness the contradictions of daily life from a different dimension, a purely critical one.

 

In all of the periods of his work, he called forth many primary data so as to put together his personal semantic code, which provided a feedback for an original and spontaneous art, deeply poetic and dramatic at the same time, even though, at first look it appears to be intellectual and distant. The art of chaotic writing, shapes and colors, as well as of a philosophical dimension which functions always on a second level, provokes the viewer’s eyes, who, in an attempt to recompose and interpret the multiplicity of points, he finally yields to the magic offered by the artistic product in order to discover a different image of modern world, a world that is of concern to him in everyday life, a life that has the potential to give him a different dimension.

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Xenakis was a manual worker, a craftsman. Like those artisans of ancient Egypt, possessing practical mind and a magic hand, who persistently and patiently carved hieroglyphs, this unique writing so much intertwined with art regarding the composition, polysemy, the beauty of symbols, the use of color, the enjoyment of gazing. Being his own baby, nevertheless, his own plastic linguistic symbols, so as to create his own- also handmade-alphabet, to be able to co- act harmoniously with the architect, the sculptor, and the painter, as well.

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Grants

1970 Grant from the Berlin Artistic Program, D.A.A.D.

1980 Research Grant of the Ministry of Culture of France

 

Social activities

1968-1983 Member of the Governing Committee of the Salon de Mai, Paris.

1969-1990 Member of the Founding and Critical Committee for the Painting Prize, “Vitry-sur-Seine”, France.

 

Awards and Distinctions

1986    “Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters” award of distinction from the French State
1988    Honour of National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul on the occasion of the 24th Olympiad, South Korea
1991    Inauguration of the section «Constantin Xénakis» at the social centre of Fameck (Lorraine), France
1996    “Delmas price of the Institut de France, following proposal from the French of Academy of Fine Arts
2016    Honour of Philologists Association in Serres, Greece, 5/6/2016