Manolis CALLIYANNIS was born in Lesbos in 1923 and died in 2010.

He received early lessons in painting from Antonis Protopatsis. In 1945, he travelled to South Africa, where he studied architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. During this period, he continued to paint and held his first solo exhibition at Constantia Galleries in Johannesburg in 1948. The following year, he abandoned architecture and moved to Paris in order to devote himself fully to painting.

In Paris, Calliyannis became associated with the post-war artistic environment and established his reputation as a painter of the School of Paris. His early work was mainly abstract, marked by restrained colour, sober tonalities and a sensitive exploration of surface and form. He exhibited at Galerie Arnaud in Paris and later presented solo exhibitions in major artistic centres including Amsterdam, Antwerp, London, Paris and New York.

From the mid-1950s, Calliyannis began making regular return visits to Greece, especially to Lesbos, which became an important source of inspiration for his work. His painting gradually moved towards landscapes, figures and compositions connected with the Greek environment, while retaining the formal discipline and atmospheric sensitivity of his abstract period.

His works are characterised by subtle colour harmonies, simplified forms and a poetic sense of place. Whether working in abstraction or landscape, Calliyannis developed a refined visual language that combines modern European painting with the light, memory and geography of Greece.

Manolis Calliyannis exhibited widely in Europe, the United States and Greece. His works are held in important public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Greece. He remains recognised as an important Greek painter of the post-war generation, closely connected with the School of Paris and with the modern interpretation of the Greek landscape.