Engraver Ioannis Gourzis was born in Athens in 1953. He studied engraving at the Athens School of Fine Arts under K. Grammatopoulos (1974 1979). He worked as an icon painter and from 1984 until 1992 as an engraver at the National Mint (Bank of Greece). Since 1992 he has been teaching Engraving at the Athens School of Fine Arts.

He has held several solo exhibitions and has taken part in dozens of group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, including the EXLIBRIS International Exhibitions (Belgium, France and Belgrade), exhibitions at the Royal Institute of Amsterdam, the MINIART 91 in Sweden, the Schwetzingen exhibition in Germany, in group exhibitions at the National Museum in Warsaw, at the Poznan Gallery in Poland, at the Moscow Concert Hall, at the Leipzig International Book Fair, at the National Gallery in Athens, as well as in Biennales and Triennales (Varna – 1989, New Delhi, India – 1994, etc.). He is a member of the Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece of which he was president from 1992 to 1994.