Trees

Tassos (Anastasios Alevizos) was born in Messini in 1914. He took his first painting lessons with painter G. Kartakis and then studied painting and engraving at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1930 – 1939) under Th. Thomopoulos, Umv. Argyros and K. Parthenis and he also attended classes at the engraving workshop of Jean Kefalinos. He joined the Communist party and during the German Occupation he created pro-resistance posters and engravings (in 1942 he was arrested by the Nazis for his allegorical work “The Madman” about Hitler). He never ceased to produce social protest works. He served as director of the graphic arts department of the Athens Technological Organisation and art consultant at the Graphic Arts enterprise “Aspioti-Elka S.A.”.

He collaborated with the Hellenic Post and produced a series of stamps for Greece and Cyprus, he illustrated albums and books and wrote articles and studies on the art of engraving. He held solo exhibitions all over Greece (Athens, Piraeus, Thessaloniki, Volos, Ioannina), as well as in Russia, Germany, the USA, Cyprus, etc., and took part in many group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, and in several major international events. He received awards and distinctions for his work (in 1938 he received an engraving award at the Pan-Hellenic exhibition, in 1940 he was awarded the Engraving Medal, and he also received 10 international awards and honours for the design of 90 stamps of the Greek State.)

He died in Athens in 1985. A year later, his wife and engraver L. Maggiorou, donated a large number of his works to the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum and in the same year, the “A. Tassos” Visual Arts Foundation was founded. He was among the founding members of the “Stathmi” Group, member of the Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece and an honorary scholar of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence.