Biography
Eleni Kyriazopoulou was born and raised in Athens, Greece, where she has been working all her life. Ever since she was a little girl, she realized that playing with colors, observing forms and shapes, and painting them was a delight for her. Τhe procedure of painting was a window that connected her with the outside world, giving her joy and a sense of self-fulfillment.
As she grew up, she found some interest in French culture, and so she studied French literature at the University of Athens. She worked in various jobs that had nothing to do with her artistic aspirations, but helped pay the rent. In the year 2000, however, at the age of 40, she decided to take the risk and start painting as her sole occupation, quitting everything else that she had been doing till then. Self-taught at first, she soon started private lessons, in order to gain time in obtaining the technical know-how that would help her control her expressive means. For two years she studied with Yanna Persaki, and then another two years with Yannis Palaiologos, both well known Greek painters.
Her subjects, as she confessed in an interview for Greek television NET, are “exterior and interior landscapes, where one leans and rests one's soul. Landscapes that fulfill me, in contrast to figures that keep emptying...”
As soon as May 2003, when her first individual exhibition took place, her work was received very positively by both the public and certain art critics. One of them, named Harry Kampourides, who writes for a major Athens daily newspaper, was impressed by what he called “the vision of her soul”:
“ How many paintings retain our interest, when the eye is not satisfied by the surface and seeks the depth? Where does this secret light, shed on Kyriazopoulou's paintings, come from?
