Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The Athens suburb of Agios Pavlos is no Montmartre. There\u00a0is no sign, as you stroll\u00a0past the graffitied metro\u00a0station and housing blocks, that it is the\u00a0domain of one of Greece\u2019s most famous\u00a0artists. But behind a\u00a0conspicuous copper door on Neofitou Metaxa street is the former family home of\u00a0Alekos Fassianos, the man once nicknamed\u00a0\u201cthe Picasso of Greece\u201d.Fassianos was renowned in his home country for his paintings, sculptures and furniture throughout his lifetime. And his works made their way into the permanent collections of the Benaki Museum, the Centre Pompidou and the Fondation Maeght.\u00a0People love his bronze sculptures of birds or cyclistsYet despite his national-treasure status, Fassianos never achieved widespread global recognition. But since his death in 2022, at the age of 86, there has been a wave of renewed interest. Last year, Tommaso Calabro in Milan held a\u00a0solo exhibition of his paintings and works\u00a0on paper, and he appeared as part of\u00a0Ithaca,\u00a0a show about Greek artists at London\u2019s Herald St gallery. His childhood home and atelier on the island of Kea have been converted into\u00a0a two-floor museum. \u201cMy father has evidently found a new audience; we\u2019ve had an unexpected track record of visitors to the museum who are young, new-age Fassianos lovers,\u201d says Viktoria Fassianou, who is in charge of the Alekos Fassianos Estate.\u00a0Collector interest has been on the rise as a result. Hotelier Yiannis Retsos, who, along with his wife Ioanna Dretta, owns a\u00a0collection of Fassianos\u2019s paintings, has already noticed this upward trend. \u201cPrices have gone up significantly over the past few years,\u201d he says. In November 2022, La photo oubli\u00e9e (1975), an\u00a0orgy of red shapes and figures in a salon,\u00a0commanded more than \u20ac170,000 at\u00a0an\u00a0auction by Bonhams Paris, up from an\u00a0estimate of \u20ac80,000-\u20ac120,000. Says Titi\u00a0Angelopoulou, Who is responsible for curating Greek art at Bonhams: \u201cFassianos is like Andy Warhol in Greece. Everyone knows him, and his popularity is rising elsewhere.\u201d\u00a0The most popular pieces for collectors are the blue and red paintings he began making in the late \u201990s, depicting \u201cFassianic\u201d symbols, \u201clike the wind blowing through scarves and people\u2019s hair\u201d, says Viktoria. At the Bonhams Greek sale in Paris last\u00a0year, the dreamy Monsieur le vent, a\u00a0pink sunset scene showing a figure holding a\u00a0windswept scarf over their head, sold for \u20ac63,900 (estimate \u20ac20,000-\u20ac30,000). The seaside scene Le\u00a0Chasseur de mer went for \u20ac44,800 (estimate \u20ac12,000-\u20ac18,000).\u00a0But Herald St\u2019s director \u00c9milie Streiff\u00a0suggests looking for paintings from\u00a0the late\u00a01960s, characterised by broad\u2011bodied figures against flat expanses\u00a0of vibrant colour. The 2D figures\u00a0and shapes are obscure, surreal almost, and there is a strong sense of experimentation in the way\u00a0he used a\u00a0single\u00a0colour. \u201cI find these to\u00a0be the most\u00a0stylistically beautiful,\u201d says\u00a0Streiff. Retsos concurs, gravitating towards work\u00a0from the \u201960s and \u201970s. \u201cPeople tend\u00a0to invest in the more recognisable works, but I\u00a0like his early phases where I\u00a0can observe his evolution.\u201d Fassianos\u2019s sketches from this period are\u00a0more moderately priced, including the\u00a0charming beach scene\u00a0Solitude, sold\u00a0at\u00a0a\u00a0Bonhams auction in\u00a0April for \u20ac12,800. At\u00a0the lower\u00a0end of the market, a lithograph poster\u00a0of his Thinker with a\u00a0Watch (1978)\u00a0is\u00a0on 1stDibs for \u20ac490.You can recognise his hand in \u201ceverything he made, from expansive and\u00a0detailed paintings to small toys cut\u00a0out\u00a0of sheet metal\u201d, says Streiff. For his\u00a0design work, Viktoria notes that \u201cpeople love his\u00a0bronze sculptures of birds,\u00a0cyclists, or his various figurines, as\u00a0well as his tables\u00a0and chairs with their unique shapes and colours\u201d. Most of his furniture designs were\u00a0unique, and are all owned by the Fassianos Estate, but you can\u00a0buy limited-edition reproductions. Carwan Gallery in Athens currently has a\u00a0selection, including a magnificent wicker bench (\u20ac12,000; limited to\u00a0100 pieces), a\u00a0sofa with\u00a0two painted serpent heads in the centre (\u20ac18,000), a glass table with\u00a0red wooden legs (\u20ac15,000), and a selection of lamps decorated with\u00a0bronze cut-outs of\u00a0Fassianos motifs (between \u20ac2,500 and \u20ac3,000).But you don\u2019t need to spend. Browsing the small antique shops in\u00a0bohemian quarters of Athens such as\u00a0Pangrati or Exarchia, you\u2019ll find trinkets\u00a0bearing his\u00a0signature scattered everywhere: ashtrays painted with profiles of gods, or the\u00a0books he designed for\u00a0Olympic Airlines that were once\u00a0gifted to passengers (though Viktoria is quick to mention that some of\u00a0these are fake).\u00a0And some of his pieces can\u2019t be collected, only enjoyed. Retsos\u2019s proudest work by Fassianos is an\u00a0installation that he privately commissioned, cut out of sheet metal and spread over three\u00a0walls around a\u00a0staircase. \u201cLight\u00a0metallic shapes represent the\u00a0heads and shoulders of a boy and\u00a0a girl \u2013 myself and my wife Ioanna, surrounded by flowers,\u201d he\u00a0says. \u201cThe pigeons symbolise the\u00a0feeling of escape.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The Athens suburb of Agios Pavlos is no Montmartre. There\u00a0is no sign, as you stroll\u00a0past the graffitied metro\u00a0station and housing blocks, that it is the\u00a0domain of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-119119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119120,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119119\/revisions\/119120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}