Born in 1916 in Ioannina, he began his studies in 1932 at the Decoration Dept of Sivitanidios School, and continued with painting and printmaking at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1937-1942) under P. Mathiopoulos, C. Parthenis and Y. Kefallinos. In the early years of WWII he joined a team formed by Kefallinos to design war posters. During the Occupation he was an active member of the Resistance (EAM) and designed posters and other printed matter for the cause.
In 1945 he was on the list of the French Institute’s scholarships for Paris but was unable to go, as in 1946 he was arrested, not for the first time, and remained in exile until 1956. His long stays at various places of exile were fruitful in terms of his art: he practiced mainly watercolour, Indian ink drawing and, to a lesser extent, engraving, while he designed costumes and stage sets for the plays staged by the exiled. In 1961 he went to Rome and then to Paris, where he also spent the years of the Colonels’ Junta after 1967, returning to Greece in 1974.
Watercolours are a major part of his work, with landscapes, especially island landscapes, as the dominant subject. Although he is comfortable using colour, his most characteristic works are the large monochrome compositions with ink where the alternating tones convey the atmosphere and the light in an emotional way. His drawings and prints, on the contrary, are dominated by the human figure in everyday scenes from his places of exile, with a strong expressionist idiom dominated by angular forms and severe lines.
He presented solo exhibitions in Greece and abroad after 1959, and participated in dozens of group shows of painting and printmaking: Salon de l’Art Libre (Paris, 1959), Nutida Grekisk Grafik (Stockholm, 1960), Contemporary Greek Painters and Print Makers (Dublin, 1979), Printmaking in the War of ΄40, the Occupation and the Resistance (Athens, 1987), etc. Retrospectives of his oeuvre were organised by the National Gallery in 1989 and the Municipal Gallery of Athens in 2002, the latter accompanied by an album published by Exantas. His works can be found in the Ioannina Municipal Gallery (donated by the artist) and in other public and private collections in Greece.