Agenor Asteriadis

Born in Larissa in 1898, Agenor Asteriadis completed primary school in his hometown and finished secondary studies in Athens, where he attended the School of Fine Arts from 1915 to 1921, studying with Georgios Roilos, Georgios Iakovidis, and Nikolaos Lytras. In 1923 he held his first exhibition in Athens at the Parnassos Literary Society. He taught at the Grevena Gymnasium, the Athens Industrial Society, the Zanneion Orphanage of Piraeus, the Hellenic Home, and the Doxiadis School. He worked as an icon painter, printmaker, and book illustrator. In 1928 he published "The House of Schwarz in Ambelakia", and in 1933—with Spyros Vassiliou—he published "Children’s Drawings".

He represented Greece at the Venice Biennale in 1934. For his publishing projects, he received the Grand Prize for Publishing at the Exposition Internationale in Paris (1937) and the First Prize at the Athens Book Fair (1939). He was a member of the groups “Techni” (1930) and “Stathmi” (1950). In 1976 the National Gallery in Athens organized a retrospective of his work. A colorist and an heir of the Byzantine tradition, he focused on landscape and portraiture, drawing inspiration from rural life, the Thessalian plain, and village fairs. He died in Athens in 1977.