Odysseus Yakoumakis

Michael Odysseus Yakoumakis was born in Athens, Greece. He studied painting at the "Scuola Libera del Nudo" of the "Accademia di Belle Arti" of Naples and obtained Laurea in Geological Science, from the University of the same city. He gained a post-graduate diploma in Computer Science from the Institute of Informatics of EL.KE.PA. (Hellenic Centre for the Enhancement of Productivity), Athens. He also completed free studies in Sumi-e and traditional Chinese painting, engraving, artistic book-binding and Graphics Design (this last at the Athens Technological Education Institute). He worked at various parts of the globe, in parallel as an engineering geologist, systems engineer and visual artist. From 2003 he has focused exclusively on the Visual Arts and settled down at Athens, Greece where he works as a painter, illustrator and writer of fantasy-fiction, graphics designer and Visual Arts instructor. His art has been shown in solo shows in Athens and group exhibitions in Athens, Montreal, Nicosia, London, Rome, Hamburg, Liverpool and Florence.

His artistic oeuvre aims "to express ideas, ideals and feelings and to convey messages at the personal, social, political, philosophical and mystic levels". He contrasts the Post-modern era with what he describes as "older, perhaps much happier and certainly more interesting times". He has increasingly used anthropocentric subject matter and a more minimalist use of a vocabulary of mythological symbols drawn from "ancient traditions of the Earth" and from his own subconscious," in a satire of "life-style", "technology", "anti-art", "economic power" and "wealth". His nostalgia is obsessive. His style combines elements from the schools of the Italian Renaissance, the Flemish and German “Primitives”, the Japanese Sumi-e and the Chinese Gonbi and Xieyi, the movements of figurative Expressionism and Surrealism, and from certain genres of European comics. He divides his current oeuvre into "Principal", "Expressionistic" and "Japanistic".