Special Information for the Artist
Thanassis Tsigos was born in Elefsina in 1914 and died in Athens in 1905. He studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens, where he graduated in 1936. He worked as an assistant under P. Tzelepis and then under C. Kotakis, in Crete and Athens, and with the declaration of the war, he enlisted in the Greek Army and served in Macedonia, participating also in military operations in Syria, Transjordan and Libya and fighting in the battle of El Alamein as a second lieutenant of the First Greek Brigade. He pioneered in Greek regent movements, while, after the failure of the latter in April of 1944 he was sentenced to death and transferred to prisons Ampassias in Cairo. With the signing of the Treaty of Lebanon his conviction was commuted to life imprisonment and he was moved to Sudan in prison Kempeit where he was released in 1946. Recommended by Le Corbusier he concluded a contract with the architects Niemeyer, Palumbo and Costa in order to work in the design of the new capital Brasilia. After a brief stay in Paris, where he met his future wife Christina Mavroidi he travels in Brazil. Living in Paris from 1948, he is buying the Gaite Montparnasse theatre, taking the scenography, costumes and the management of the company while Christina Tsigou is directing the plays and interprets the leading roles in a theatre that was to become one of the most innovative theatres of Paris. In the same period, he met with important artists and intellectuals such as Sartre, Chagall and Picasso. However, his parallel preoccupation with painting (1949-1953), meant to become his main occupation: the painter of pulsing flowers exhibits for the first time his works at the Gallerie du Siecle in 1950, and in 1953 he retired from the theatre and his marriage falls apart. The same year he has his first solo exhibition at the Studio Paul Facchetti in Paris, taking highly acclaimed reviews in the journal Les Temps Modernes, under the direction of Sartre, while some people compare his writing to that of Pollock. From 1954 to 1961 he exhibits his work at the Paris galleries, the Salon des Realites Nouvelles and elsewhere, coexisting with artists like Fautrier and Max Ernst. In 1961 he returned to Athens and exhibitions of his works take place in Athens, Paris and Milan. After his death from liver cirrhosis in 1965, a seven member Committee of Thanassis Tsigos Exhibition in the Athens Technological Institute was held. In 1980, a Tsigos’ retrospective was held in the National Gallery - Alexandros Soutzos Museum and another one at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. A catalogue in French was published. In 2004, the exhibition "John Gaitis Thanassis Tsigos" was held in Cycladic Art Gallery in Syros Island and in 2005 was organized a retrospective exhibition of Thanassis Tsigos on the Cultural Centre of Elefsinas.
