Pavlos Samios was born in Athens in 1948.
He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Nikos Nicolaou and Yannis Moralis. His first two exhibitions were organised in the company of other artist friends in an abandoned car workshop and then outdoors somewhere in Varkiza, and the second exhibition consisted of large-scale sculpture.
He spent the next six years working on the island of Aegina, and those works were presented in his first individual exhibition at the Zoumboulakis Gallery. It was then that he undertook the commission to execute frescoes in the traditional manner in one of the three churches that he had painted outside Athens; he had been working on religious icons since the age of sixteen. His affection for the neat drawing demanded by this art is a long-standing affair.
Samios then went on to live, work, and exhibit in Paris, intermittently showing also in Athens and other Greek cities, Cannes, and Tokyo. He now lives and works permanently in Greece at his homes in Athens and Aegina.
Pavlos Samios’ recent series of frescoes conveys the marvellous methods used from time immemorial in order to bring in an inimitable fashion the essence and absolute power of colours in the unique transparency that is achieved over the long moment during which damp plaster dries into eternity.
His monumental female figures, rigid yet infinitely relaxed, with dreamy eyes and heads resting on the robust, wise, fragrant motherly and at the same time erotic hands, act as statuesque reminders of the promise, indeed the certainty of utter solace and pleasure that lies within their curvaceous bodies. They sit and stare, dominant and wonderful, like modern-day Sibyls.
He has held more than 20 solo exhibitions in Greece, Paris, and London. He has participated in more than 15 group exhibitions, most of them in France. In 2002, the Foundation for Hellenic Culture in New York held a retrospective exhibition of his work.
