KIKOS LANITIS

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“The artist’s mind collects icons, re-mixes them and transfers them on canvas that functions as a screen, reflecting the socio-political happenings of his time.”

Kikos Lanitis was born 1948 in Limassol of Cyprus, but since 1961 and up to his coming of age he lived and studied in London. The 60s will mark his life and his later artistic course strongly. In 1964 he leaves his family and lives alone, supported by a council grant for athletes. He studies painting at the Kingsway College, where he meets young musicians and actors and works with them as a stage designer. He spends a while in a hippie commune. He takes to the batik techniques and he develops them with his own experimenting, while he stamps the commune - but also various shops of Carnaby street - with his personal style, creating psychedelic patterns on second hand clothes. His first works are obviously influenced by the avant-garde exhibitions of that period in London. For instance, he sets on fire painted sacks and throws them burning in the Thames and, after taking them out again, he sticks them on canvas and gives a different dimension to the work's surface with their gaps. His interest in experimenting with the techniques and the materials remains unimpaired until today.His friendship to Giannis Spyropoulos, whom he considers a great teacher and a turning-point in his artistic course, has influenced Lanitis deeply and has driven him since 1984 to Abstraction.He has been Vice-president of the Art Chamber of Cyprus and Cultural Councilor of the Municipality of Nicosia (1983-1986). He has been a teacher of Art at the G. C. School of Careers in Nicosia (1980 - 1986). In 1980 he participated in the Olympic Games in Moscow (Judo).Since 1986 he has turned exclusively to painting. Until 1996 he stayed in Athens, but now he lives and works between Greece and Cyprus. At the same time he has a permanent column that he illustrates with electronic artistic drawing in the weekly magazine "To Periodiko" and in the monthly "Must" of Cyprus. Influenced by the Dadaists and John Lenon's book "A Spaniard in the works", he expresses himself in his own individual way, trying to transfer images through the acoustic potential of wordsWorks of his are to be found in the Municipal Gallery of Athens, in the Ministry of Education of Cyprus, in theAverof Gallery in Metsovo, in the Nicosia Art Centre, in the Pierides Gallery and in private collections. He has presented his work in Greece, in Cyprus and abroad. The French Ministry of Culture has honoured him in 1984 with a distinction for his research on the materials and on the techniques.