The Frogs

Engraver Vassilis Charos was born in 1938 in Kythira. From 1962 to 1967 he studied on a scholarship granted by the State Scholarships Foundation (I.K.Y.) at the Athens School of Fine Arts in the engraving workshop of K. Grammatopoulos and the workshop of Byzantine icon painting and fresco. In 1970 – 1973 he continued his studies on a scholarship granted by the State Scholarships Foundation (I.K.Y.) at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, in the lithography workshop of Dayez and the stained glass workshop of Diran.

He founded the Greek Printmakers’ Association and served as its first President. He was also a member of the Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece, where he served as Curator of the Department of Engraving, member of the Classification and Evaluation Committees, representative in committees of the Ministry of Culture, and member of the committee of the organisation of Pan-Hellenic exhibitions. Following his first solo exhibitions in Athens in 1965 (Keraia art gallery) and 1968 (Hellenic American Union) and in Paris in 1971 and 1972, his work was presented in more than 25 solo exhibitions in Greece and abroad. He also participated in major group exhibitions including the Pan-Hellenic Exhibitions (1965 – 1975 and 1987), the Engraving Biennials of Sao Paulo (1969), Paris (1972), Baden-Baden (1981), etc.

He won the First Prize of Engraving (House of Letters and Arts) in 1970 and the First Prize of Drawing (Hellenic American Union) in 1967. He published studies on engraving in the daily press, in the art magazine Zygos, and in Chroniko (Ora). He died in Athens in July 2000.