Biographies

Droungas Achilleas

Achilleas Droungas was born in 1940 in Piraeus. He studied engraving under K. Grammatopoulos and stage design under V. Vassiliadis at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1959 – 1964). He continued his studies in graphic design on a scholarship at the Slade School of Fine Art in London under A. Gross and B. Dos Santos (1970 – 1973).

From 1975 to 1976, on a scholarship granted by the Ford Foundation, he attended lithography classes at the Tamarind Institute of the University of New Mexico in the USA. Until 1974 he worked mainly as an engraver and took part in international engraving exhibitions such as, the Mostra Internazionale di Bianco e nero in Lugano (1968), the Alexandria Biennale (1968), the Bradford Biennale (1972), the Fredrikstad biennale (1974) etc. In 1974 he turned to painting.

He held his first solo painting exhibitions in Athens (Zoumboulakis Galleries 1974 and 1978, 1983) and then in Arizona (1985, 1987 Joy Tash). More exhibitions followed in Greece and abroad. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions in Greece, Europe and the USA. In 1982 he painted a 45-meter-long mural for the Athenaeum Intercontinental Hotel in Athens.

In 1994 a large retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Pieridis Gallery and in 2009 at the National Gallery. He is a member of the Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece and the Association of Contemporary Art.