Stelios Faitakis trained as a painter and was one of the pioneering figures in the street art movement that flourished in Athens since the mid-1990s. Faitakis’ figurative, anthropocentric paintings and murals (which are a veritable assault on the eye) are political and social allegories, packed with visual information, multi-layered narratives and dense symbolism. Executed in the resuscitated and reinvented style of icon painting, cross-fertilised with a variety of other visual references, and rendered in a characteristic palette of warm golds, vibrant hues of red, and a variety of ochres and earth tones, Faitakis’ works possess an unmistakeable visual character. This is particularly noteworthy at a time when ascertaining an artistic ‘signature’ is becoming increasingly difficult and more and more rare. Apart from the obvious influence of Byzantine (and particularly Cretan) icon painting, Faitakis’ work is informed – equally – by graffiti, urban culture, German expressionism, old master painting (particularly Pieter Bruegel the elder, Albrecht Durer and Hans Memling), Mexican muralism, traditional Greek shadow theatre, and Japanese woodcuts.
