Dimitrios Biskinis

Dimitrios Biskinis was born in Patras in 1891. He received his first lessons in painting from his grandfather, the icon painter Georgis Zografos. In 1901 he moved with his mother to Athens and studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, with Konstantinos Volanakis and Georgios Roilos. In 1903 he returned to Patras to work with his uncle, the icon painter Miltiadis Zografos. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1906 to 1911 and continued at the Académie Julian and the Grande Chaumière in Paris from 1919 to 1923. In 1923 he set up his studio in the Zografou district in Athens. In 1928, he was appointed professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts and became its deputy director in 1930. One of the most popular Greek artists of the interwar period, he illustrated magazines, calendars, and books, including Penelope Delta’s Secrets of the Swamp (1937). A close friend of the poet Kostis Palamas, he painted his portraits. Adopting a symbolist idiom, he produced portraits, religious and mythological-metaphysical subjects, allegorical and dreamlike scenes, and still lifes. He died in Athens in 1947. The Parnassos Literary Society organized memorial exhibitions in 1957 and 1967.