Biskinis, Dimitrios

Dimitrios Biskinis was born in the city of Patras in 1891. Father died when Dimitris was still a child and the future artist grew up with his grandfather, icon painter George Zografos in the village of Curtezi, near the town of Kalavrita . Together with his mother and brother, he moved to Athens , entered the Athens School of Fine Arts , where he studied with Konstantin Volanakis , George Roilos , Dimitri Geraniotis and George Yakovidis . In 1914, he took part in a competition held by the Polytechnic Institute and received a scholarship, established by philanthropist George Averoff , to continue his studies abroad. The First World War delayed departure abroad for as much as 5 years. In 1919, Biscinis left for Paris , where he studied at the Academy of Julian and the Academy of Grand-Chaumiere . At the same time, Biscinis exhibited his work in the Paris Salon ( Salon des artistes francais ). The artist returned to Athens in 1923. Settled down in the area of Zografos , where he created his own studio. In 1928, he was appointed teacher of perspective and scenography at the Athens School of Fine Arts to the department left by old age Vincent Bokatsyambisom ^[2] . From 1930 until his death in 1947, he taught drawing at the preparatory department. Towards the end of the artist’s life, he became deputy director of the School ^[3] . The artist was friendly with the poet Kostis Palamas and illustrated many of the poet's books. Dimitrios Biskinis died in Athens in 1947. 10 years after the artist’s death, in 1957, a retrospective exhibition was organized at the Parnassos Gallery in Athens. In 1991 , in connection with the centenary of the artist’s birth, retrospective exhibitions were organized at the artist’s homeland in the Municipal Gallery of Patras and the Zografu Municipal Gallery of the Athens Zografos district, where the artist lived most of his life ^[4] .

Biskinis was an excellent portrait painter, but his themes covered symbolic paintings of academic style from Greek mythology and the Christian religion. The art historian Maria Ayvalioti writes that Biskinis worked “between French Symbolism and German idealism” and believes that his place in Greek painting is between Nikolaos Gizis and Konstantin Partenis . In his early works, Biskinis does not depart from the academic tradition. The artist himself formulated the search for the following as follows: "In my opinion, it is important in art to create from existing edements something that does not exist, but which would be a desired reality." Maria Ayvalioti entitled “Dimitrios Biskinis - Between Sleep and Death”. The art historian emphasizes in the artist’s works the elements of sleep, prophecy, the role of the subconscious, brought to the surface at that time by psychoanalysis, and the face of death, appearing majestically, as the liberator "archangel with black wings." His work “Vespers” (1917) expresses the whole agony of Biskinis about life, which the artist recognized as an ongoing struggle against the inevitable death: “The whole meaning of life is the continuous struggle of a person against death. And in it man dominates only in spirit. Every spiritual victory is a victory of man over the power of destruction. ” During his stay in Paris, Biscinis was influenced by occult beliefs that dominated Parisian art circles. The influence of these tendencies is reflected in the works The Mockery of Death (1922) and The Vision of a Nun (1923). A dream, as an omen of death, can be seen in his last and unfinished work, “The Death of an Artist” (1947) ^[5] .