Vakalo, Giōrgos, 1902-1991

Giōrgos Vakalo was a painter and a stage designer. He was born in Constantinople in 1902. He began his art studies in his native Greece and continued them in Paris. There, in the decades between the two World Wars, he established his reputation both as a painter and as a stage designer working in the theater of the Cartel, Copeau, Baty Dullin, Pitoeff and Jouvet and also of Michel Saint-Denis, all of them reformers of the theatre following the revolution in design created by Gordon Craig. Vakalo during this period represented France at many international scenographic exhibitions and for his services was awarded a Chavelier of the Legion of Honor. Returning to Greece on the outbreak of World War II he has since designed productions for the National Theatre both for the classic dramas and comedies and for Shakespeare, Molière, de Musset, Brecht, and other dramatists. His paintings - a combination of surrealism, abstraction, and a characteristic playfulness - have been shown widely in Europe and in the United States and are to be found in the collections of former president of Cyprus, Makarios, the Museum of the École d'Aubusson and in the Harvard Library. Also they can be found in private collections in France, Belgium, Switzerland, America (Boston, Texas, and New York) and Japan. In Greece, his paintings are in state and private collections, in collections of societies and in the public galleries of Athens, Thessalonikē, Rhodes, and Iōannina.

For a certain period, the illustration of books was one of his most important activities. He took part in artistic movements, as a founding member in the group "Stathmoi." In 1957, along with his wife Helenē and a team of artists, designers and theorists, Panagiōtēs Tetsēs and Phrantzēs Phrantziskakēs, he established the first School of Decorative Arts, the "Vakalo School of Art and Design," in Athens (Greece). Vakalo died in 1991.