Nikolaos Santorinaios studied at The School of Fine Arts, Athens under Georgios Iakovides and Nikiforos Lytras. After graduating he moved to Egypt.

In 1910 he returned to Greece. Initially he worked on frescoes in many churches in Corinthia, Peloponnese. He later taught in secondary education.

Santorinaios works include landscapes, portraits and religious subjects. His work evolved from realism to expressionism.

He presented his work in many group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, notably, the 1960’s Biennale of Sao Paolo, the 1962 International Exhibitions of Serbia and Romania, the 1963 International Exhibition of Russia, and so on.
In 1986 The Municipal Gallery of Athens organised a large scale retrospective of his work.

Work by Nikolaos Santorinaios can be found in The National Gallery of Greece and many other public and private collections.