Mario Prassinos
Mario Prassinos (born August 12, 1916 in Constantinople , Ottoman Empire , † October 23, 1985 in Paris , France ) was a French painter of Greek - Italian descent. He is one of the most important representatives of abstract painting after the Second World War .
Life
Mario Prassinos was born to a Greek family in 1916, on August 12th according to the Gregorian calendar or on July 30th according to the Greek Orthodox calendar . His family had lived in Constantinople for many generations. In 1922 many Greeks left Turkey to escape threatened persecution; his family emigrated to France.
Mario Prassinos attended school in Puteaux , later in Nanterre until 1936, then the Condorcet high school. Mario Prassinos often went to Charles Dullin's stage workshop , which introduced him to the world of theater. In 1934 his sister Gisèle Prassinos (* 1920) had her first publications of her own texts in the magazine "Minotaure". During this time, through his sister, he met the artist Man Ray , the surrealist poets André Breton , Paul Éluard , René Char and Benjamin Péret and the painters Max Ernst , Salvador Dalí , Hans Arp and Marcel Duchamp .
Mario Prassinos created several drawings and covers for the publisher Guy Lévis-Mano. From 1936 he moved away from Surrealism artistically . In 1938 he had his first solo exhibition in the "Galerie Billiet" in Paris , opened by René Char .
As a volunteer in the war, he was injured in World War II and received the war cross. In 1942 he worked with Raymond Queneau . Between 1943 and 1945 he met Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre , of whom he illustrated Le Mur ( The Wall ), as well as Jean Lescure and Gaston Bachelard . In 1947 he designed his first sets and costumes for a play by Paul Claudel , staged by Jean Vilar at the first Avignon Festival . He started working with the painter Alberto Magnelli and met Myriam Prevot, the future director of the “Galerie de France”, where he later exhibited. In 1949 he received French citizenship.
His series of pictures Troupeaux from this period shows his abstract painting style. From 1951 he designed his first wallpaper and tapestries . In 1958, after a cruise with Albert Camus and Michel Gallimard, he had a longer stay on the island of Spetses in Greece , where he began to experiment with pointilism . Max-Pol Fouchet dedicated a television film to him. In 1959 Mario Prassinos took part in documenta 2 (and in 1977 also documenta 6 ) in Kassel .
From 1959 to 1964, Prassinos continuously designed decorations and costumes for Jean Vilar. New themes emerged in his painting: portraits of Bessie Smith or his grandfather Prétextat (1965–1968), Suaires on the Holy Shroud of Turin (1974–1975), Paysages turcs (1972–1981) (exhibited in the Grand-Palais in Paris 1980) and Arbres (1980-1985). In 1969 Lucien Clergue made a film about his work with a text by Jean Lescure .
His last work is the eleven paintings of agony for the church Notre-Dame de Pitié in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence . Mario Prassinos died in his home in Eygalières on October 23, 1985.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Prassinos, Mario |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French painter of Italian-Greek descent |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 12, 1916 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Constantinople , Ottoman Empire |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 23, 1985 |
| Place of death | Paris , France |