8 facts about Stelios Votsis

Stelios Votsis (Greek: Στέλιος Βότσης; 1929 – 9 November 2012) was a Cypriot artist, one of the leading figures of militant art on the island, a co-founder of the Cyprus Chamber of Fine Arts and its one-time president. His style was best characterised as ‘structural abstraction’.

Born in Larnaca 21 November 1929, he demonstrated an aptitude for painting early on and staged exhibitions while still a high-school student at the Pancypriot Commercial School. Upon graduation, he travelled to post-war England in 1949 to pursue his hope of studying art. His studies took him to Saint Martin’s School of Art, Sir John Cass College, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the Slade School of Art. As his friend the late Stass Paraskos noted: “At the Slade, he was taught by William Coldstream, and in his early decree Votsis was influenced by the Euston Road School, a organization of leftwing realist artists including Coldstream”. In his second year at the Slade, he won first prize in a university-wide drawing competition but declined the prize, explaining that he did not deem his deed deserving. Those same exacting standards help him to ruin almost anything the paintings he produced during this period. After permanent financial danger and even a bout of tuberculosis, he graduated from the Slade in 1955.

He returned to Cyprus the thesame year and co-founded the Cyprus Chamber of Fine Arts. Together bearing in mind a number of other pioneering artists he was instrumental in introducing objector art to Cyprus. He represented the island nation upon the international stage in various exhibitions including:

His paintings can be found in a number of collections including the National Gallery of Greece, the Greek Ministry of Culture, the Vorres Museum, the Presidential Palace of Cyprus and new public and private collections in Cyprus, Greece and beyond. Notable in the midst of the play in completed prior to his death is his collaboration afterward the player Stass Paraskos. Working on a single canvas but maintaining their respective styles, these paintings are known as the ‘pomishiarika’ (Cypriot dialect for ‘jointly owned’), although the art historian Michael Paraskos has described them as in fact anarchist paintings in which the ‘dictatorship’ of the single artist greater than the canvas is replaced by a democratic space. Some of these joint works were put on display in Nicosia 2007, in an exhibition inaugurated by the British art historian Norbert Lynton.

Votsis was awarded the Ruskin prize in drawing and the bronze medal in the European prize for painting contest which was held in Ostend-Belgium in 1973. For his contributions to the culture of Cyprus he was awarded an Annual Honorary Grant by the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Cyprus.