Mario Prassinos

Mario Prassinos was born in Constantinople in 1916. In 1922, his family moved to Paris, where he studied at the École des Langues Orientales (1932) and at the Sorbonne’s Faculté des Lettres (1934). He apprenticed with the post-Cubist painter Clément Serveau. Early in his career he formed close ties with poets, artists, and theater practitioners, and he was influenced by Surrealism. In 1937 he published a small album of drawings, "Calamité des Origines", with commentary by his sister, the poet Gisèle Prassinos (1920 – 2015). He held his first solo exhibition at the Billiet-Pierre Vorms Gallery in 1938. In 1942 he began collaborating with Gallimard Editions, illustrating books by Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Raymond Queneau, and others. In 1951 he bought a house in Provence and began producing his first tapestries. He first visited Greece in 1958. In 1961 he taught at the École des Beaux-Arts de Luminy in Marseille. He designed sets and costumes for the Avignon Festival, Paris’s Théâtre National Populaire (TNP), and La Scala in Milan. He also wrote on art, including "Les Prétextats" (1973) and "La Colline Tatouée" (1983). He died in 1985 at his home in Eygalières. In 2005 Actes Sud published the monograph "Mario Prassinos".