Maria Filopoulou

Born in Athens in 1964, Maria Filopoulou was preparing for architecture school when a drawing teacher urged her to try fine arts instead. A single summer in a painting workshop was enough to seal her vocation. She went on to study painting at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1984 to 1988 under Leonardo Cremonini, then pursued postgraduate studies in lithography with Abraham Hadad on a French government scholarship.

A leading figure of contemporary figurative painting in Greece, she first explored interiors, staircases, greenhouses and seascapes, rendered with a distinctive curvature, as if seen through a wide angle lens. Since the mid 1990s her gaze has turned to vast landscapes and the sea, eventually diving beneath its surface: her celebrated underwater swimmers, bodies freed from gravity, drift through shimmering light where reflections, bubbles and sand create a sensual, almost dreamlike world.

Her work is held in major public and private collections, including the National Gallery in Athens, the Greek Parliament, the Bank of Greece and the Goulandris Museum. She has presented more than twenty solo exhibitions in Athens, Thessaloniki, Paris, London, New York and Istanbul, and has taken part in numerous group exhibitions worldwide.