The painter George Angelinis voluntarily closed the cycle of his life by “returning” to the sea out of which, as his works show, he had emerged.
A many-faceted personality, not easily placeable in a particular social framework, a thoughtful artist, he declared, “An artist cannot easily accept compromise, since he has dedicated his life to art”.
Born in Peloponnese in 1918, he was adopted by the family Angelinis in Zakynthos where he spent his first years devoted to the ideals of the Boy Scout movement, until the day when, at the age of 28, he discovered the life and work of Van Gogh which awakened in him his talent as a painter.
The greatest part of his artistic effort was devoted to the study of Minoan Art which, he believed, provided the key as much to the secrets of painting as to the discovery of the spiritual essence of the Minoan Civilization. He discovered many different techniques of fresco painting. By burying painted surfaces for many years, he sought to prove that the primary Minoan colours were much closer and more accessible to him, who approached them with his Mediterranean instinct, than to those who were guided, in this respect, by their Northern European nationality. His immediate contact with Crete provided him with many solutions on the aesthetics of colour.
He experimented incessantly, endeavouring to reproduce the blue of the Cretan sea and sky, as different from that of Attica. He was far-seeing in his life and art. His works are characterized by a pioneering tendency and an intuitive feeling for things to come.
