Thanos Tsingos

Although acclaimed for his work as a stage designer and architect, Tsingos is best known for his paintings of dynamic and emotionally-charged flowers and still-lifes. Tsingos' initial studies were in architecture at the National Technical University in Athens from 1931-1936. In 1947, he moved to Brazil at the recommendation of Le Corbusier and worked with Oscar Niemeyer, Lucio Costa and Palumbo on the plans for the new capital Brazilia. By the end of that year he moved to Paris, abandoning architecture to focus on painting and stage design. By 1953, Tsingos organized his first one-man show at the Studio Facchetti in Paris.  

Despite his association with the Ecole de Paris, Tsingos' paintings defy classification as he is in fact one of the first Greek artists also to embrace the teachings of the art informel movement. The French writer Michel Tapié, the author of Un art autre (Art of Another Kind), coined the term art informel  in 1952. Tapié organized art exhibitions under this title that included works by Jean Dubuffet, Willem de Kooning and Alberto Burri. This European movement chose to practise a style of painting that defied the classical teachings of composition and line, emphasising irrationality and freedom of form. Tsingos' paintings express this spontanteity: he applied paint directly from the tube with bold movements of the whole body.