Charos Manolis
Throughout his career, he developed a large exhibition activity abroad and in Greece, where he returned permanently in 1974. His work gained enormous popularity (in spite of his critics), thanks to his peculiar artistic idiom, his outstanding productivity and his persistence to bring his art into contact with the broadest possible social strata in every way imaginable. He would certainly be glad that his little men have been placed in the Athens metro station ‘Stathmos Larissis’.
He died in 1984 in Athens, a week after the opening of his major exhibition at the Athens National Art Gallery. The bilingual edition Yiannis Gaitis: Kritikos Katalogos/Catalogue Raisonné (Angers, 2003), edited by his daughter, Loretta Gaitis-Charrat, is a comprehensive, all-inclusive monograph of his work. In 2006, a retrospective exhibition was organized at the Benaki Museum, Athens, while the last monograph on his work was published in 2009.
Manolis Charos was born in Kythira, in 1960. He studied engraving and painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (1978) in Paris. He graduated with full marks and in 1982, he continued his post graduate studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Decoratifs, on Communication and Image.
In 1984, he was awarded the National Pris des Fondations of France in lithography and the State of France bought some of his works. In 1991, he traveled to the United States, where Absolut Vodka used one of his works in its commercial campaign. In 1993, he designed the paper campaign for the National Book Center of Greece. In 1998, he was awarded the Academy of Athens Award for painters under 40 years of age.
During the years 2000-2001, he worked as a Visiting Artist at the Princeton University, in the Unites States. He has participated in important thematic exhibitions, in Greece and abroad.
