Photini Stephanidi

Stephanidi Photini
© Marios-Panayotis Pelonis

Βorn in Athens in 1962, the artist and illustrator Photini Stephanidi – daughter of the painter Yannis Stephanidis – completed her studies in Painting and Fresco at the Athens School of Fine Arts in 1986, under Yannis Moralis, Dimitris Mytaras and Konstantinos Xinopoulos. Her illustrations have featured in over seventy published works, including publications with Greek folk tales, literature and poetry (among them many collectors’ editions). Notable among the many prizes and distinctions her work has gained are the Bratislava Illustrators’ Biennale Plaque (2001), the Greek State Prize for Illustration (2003, 2007 and 2011), the Belgrade Illustrators’ Biennale “Golden Pen” (2005) and “Plaquette” (2010), the first prize for illustration from the Greek Section of I.B.B.Y. (1995, 2005 and 2011), her selection as the Hellenic Republic’s candidate for the 2004 Hans Christian Andersen Prize, the 2008 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Awards and the 2009 B.N.F. (National Library of France).

Works

Solo Exhibitions

2023

Solo exhibition Zivasart Gallery Athens

2018

Christos & Photini: Word & Image Gallery 7 Athens

2016

Icons on Eros Gallery 7 Athens

2013

Saveurs d'Ame Périple / Arts et Lettres Helléniques Brussels

2012

The Strange Love of the White Horse and the Poplar Tree Art Space 24 Athens

2012

The Painting Looks Like a Fairytale Municipal Cultural Centre of Nea Ionia Volos

2012

The Romantic Cat of the Deeps Harta Bookstore Volos

2011

With the Paint-Brush of the Tales Miranda Art Gallery Hydra

2011

The Statue Who Was Always Cold Charta Bookshop Volos

2007

Eros and Psyche, Sappho and Without a Shadow Chyssothemis Art Gallery Chalandri

2005

Shards of Absence Gallery of Art and Books Athens

2004

Words and Pictures Heidelberg Town Hall Heidelberg

2004

Paintings Polyedron Art Gallery Patras

2000

Paintings Clasing Gallery Münster

1999

Paintings and Engravings Chryssa Gallery Katerini

1999

Paintings, Illustrations and Workshop Town Hall of Aghia Paraskevi Athens

1998

Paintings Art and Literature Space Athens

1998

Miranda Art Gallery Hydra

1995

A Book Cervantes Institute Athens

1988

Painting Eleni Koroneou Gallery Athens

Press

Photini Stephanidi begins her painting from the journeys of a gaze that surveys and illuminates, that delves deeper and internalises the “small and great world” of everyday life, of experiences, of memories, of expectations, of dreams, the world of the ephemeral yet defining, along with the other world, that of desires and the enlargement of the momentary, as it is captured by and springs up from the subconscious. In the visual reconstruction of all those ‘groups’ that make up her own ‘environments’, what comes first is the poetic way in which she puts them together, associatively, conveying the after-sensations of what is, ultimately, a polynomial reality. Her colours, earthly and joyful, transfuse a nostalgic and dreamy mood that nurtures and, simultaneously, dilates the insignificant details, which take on a semantic range, conquering, in her painting, their unprecedented value. In an abstract way, or, at other times, combining the recognisable elements of a more realistic language, Photini Stephanidi paints in the way that a sensitive receiver would keep notes in a journal. In her work, nature becomes human experience and, conversely, human experience becomes a synaesthetically vibrating ‘landscape’ that contains conflated times, places, rhythms, seasons, qualities, flavours, scents and sounds, which evoke musical natural frequencies. In essence, the painter depicts, through her psychic oscilloscope, realities, fictions and transcendences that negate decay and banish oblivion, bridging the gap between past and present, the contracted and the uncontracted, and the questions of life with its exclamation marks.

 

Athena Schina
Art Critic and Historian
* From the group exhibition catalogue “Ploes XXI: Nepenthe and Eothina”, Petros and Marika Kydoniefs Foundation, Andros, 2015.