About Ioanna Konstantinou
Biography
I was born in Athens Greece but a part of my ancestors come from a remote stone village – Kalarrytes - situated in the Epirus mountains, Greece. Wanting to express myself from an early age, and showing a great interest in Art, I studied painting at the Superior School of Fine Arts in Athens (1976-1981) and conservation of works of art at the Paris I University in Sorbonne (1981-1985) with the French Government's scholarship. I worked for several years as a professor at the Athens Technological Institute of Education and at the National Bank of Greece Cultural Institute.
As a painter, my solo exhibitions have taken place in Athens, Paris, Oslo, London, and Vienna. Around the years 1990, after visiting many of times my old semi-abandoned family house in Kalarrytes I was struck by the fantastic mountain views there and started painting imaginary landscapes expressing my feelings about the beauty of Nature and especially of the mountains. The strong emotional charge, created by the images of nature, is transferred to the canvas without copying what I am actually looking at. I choose to reproduce the atmosphere of natural intensity, to get out the exaltation, the calm, the magic, and the gloriousness that "wild nature" imposes on me.
As a painter, my solo exhibitions have taken place in Athens, Paris, Oslo, London, and Vienna. Around the years 1990, after visiting many of times my old semi-abandoned family house in Kalarrytes I was struck by the fantastic mountain views there and started painting imaginary landscapes expressing my feelings about the beauty of Nature and especially of the mountains. The strong emotional charge, created by the images of nature, is transferred to the canvas without copying what I am actually looking at. I choose to reproduce the atmosphere of natural intensity, to get out the exaltation, the calm, the magic, and the gloriousness that "wild nature" imposes on me.
