Giannis Faitakis

Produced under the auspices of the abolished National Welfare Organization (NWO), now belonging to the collections of the National Centre for Social Solidarity, the tapestries reproduced paintings by well-known Greek artists such as Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, Yannis Moralis, Yannis Tsarouchis, Spiros Vassiliou, Jannis Spyropoulos, Nikos Nikolaou as well as Giannis Faitakis, director at the Tapestry school.

Trained in Aubusson, France, the NWΟ weavers employed the French weaving technique. Each tapestry was weaved upside down, in a horizontal loom. Weavers worked from the back side, that is, they weaved the tapestry on the wrong side. They had, however, a hand mirror, which they put through the unwoven warps holding it to reflect the right side of the portion in process. Wool, linen and silk were used as raw materials. The weavers’ mastery was highly dependent on their skill to interpret the painting into the language of weaving, a particularly laborious process that could well take from 8 months to a year.

The painter Giannis Faitakis, a graduate of the Athens School of Fina Arts (1956) and a student of Yannis Moralis and Yannis Tsarouchis, received a scholarship from Ecole Nationale d’ Art Decoratif d’ Aubusson (1960-62) in France and returning to Greece he proceeded to implement a bold plan to weave, on a trial basis, paintings by contemporary painters as well as his own drawings. The works were exhibited at the Athens Art Gallery at the HILTON Hotel in December 1965. Since then the production of tapestries had been undertaken by the NWO.

Faitakis’ oeuvre moves across a dream world whose symbols and ideas, however, one would have no difficulty in interpreting, while the abundant light and intense colours, combined with a special skill in Greek subject matter, are the characteristics that mainly expressed his psychic world.  As he stated: “My art is a mental work and not a means of survival”.

Curated by: Tina Daskalantonaki