Zacharias Papantoniou (1978) was born in Athens. He studied Painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts. He continued his studies with a Fulbright Scholarship at Massart in Boston from where he received his MFA degree. He has had three solo shows and participated in several group exhibitions in Greece and abroad.

His work has a personal tone that uses contemporary visual language of multiple references and influences. It is primarily motivated by existential angst and driven by the desire and ambition to bring up and see through issues and reflections of his own nature. Adopting color’s richness and texture as a vehicle, Papantoniou uses his intuition in tandem with an extremely analytical process to create poetic works with emotional and intellectual density. Vacillating from abstract to representational, he focuses on visual matters, thus allowing for deeper things to come through and manifest. The image is guided by a strong formal search that aspires to retrieve and redefine its own meaning. Each painting is “orchestrated” in layers through superposed arrangements, crossings and readjustments while avoiding any superficial resolutions. A poly-prismatic image emerges that has multiple readings and meanings. It is a process that relies heavily on spontaneous gesture and intuition as well as on precise drawing and reflection. He lives and works in Athens.