M HKA Ensembles

° 1945

Born in Athens (GR), lives in Athens (GR).

Dimitris Alithinos

From 1968 to 1970 he studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (Nikos Nikolaou’s workshop). In 1973 he graduates from Rome’s Accademia di Belle Arti (L. Montanarini’s workshop) and in 1980 from the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris (F. Mosca’s workshop). His oeuvre includes painting, collage, prose, artistic actions/happenings, constructions and installations, as well as environmental interventions. In the early Seventies he begins his artistic course in terms of exhibitions – at the Desmos gallery and elsewhere. From 1973 until 1979 he realises a series of artistic actions in the urban settings of European cities and interventions in public buildings with the aim to save the concept of the language of painting, and to be actively engaged with social space. In 1979 he presents the work ‘Artistic Action – Script in Space’ at Desmos gallery, via which he proposes a move away from the established commercial art space and instead a move towards a more direct communication with the public. In the early Eighties, he creates the groups of works Baroxysme and Moments in Times. He starts to distance himself from the idea of the work as action and from the physical intervention of the artist. In 1981, via his encounters with forgotten civilisations, he begins his Concealments of various objects in different places around the world. From 1993 he develops further the intercultural and timeless nature of his quests. He begins his Collaborations with the Cultures of the world, via which he actively participates in people’s everyday and religious lives.

He has presented his work internationally in a multitude of solo and group exhibitions (Paris Biennale of Young Artists, 1980, Sao Paulo Biennale, 1983, Istanbul Biennale, 1989, Venice Biennale, 1997, Dimitris Alithinos: A Retrospective, National Museum of Contemporary Art, 2013, et al). Lives and works in Athens.