Dimitris Mytaras was born in Chalkis in 1934. Artistically gifted from a young age, he drew and painted the scenes of his daily life, which at the time were populated with tragic acts of war. His father, a barber, held little exhibitions of his son’s work in the shop he ran. Mytaras studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Yiannis Moralis from 1953 to 1957. He later enrolled at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris to study stage design as well as interior decoration at the Institut National des Métiers d’Art in Paris, with a scholarship from the Greek State Scholarship Foundation. From 1964 to 1972, he acted as director of the Interior Decoration Workshop of the Athens Technological Institute.
This period overlapped with the Greek junta (1967–1974), during which the artist sought to comment critically on Greek life through a series of realistic works entitled Photographic Documents. From 1975 onwards, he taught at the painting workshop of the Athens School of Fine Arts. Along with his work as a professor and with the help of the municipal authority, he founded the Chalkida Art Workshop in his hometown in 1978, which, under the artistic direction of his wife, continues to develop important teaching and cultural activities.
Anthropomorphism forms the crux of Mytaras’ figurative focus, which has evolved towards a combination of naturalism and expressionism. The former was particularly prevalent during the 1960s, while the latter grew in strength from 1975 onwards. A multi-tasker at heart – he was also a poet, talented costume and set designer and illustrator – Mytaras admittedly liked to be stretched thin, claiming that it somehow fuelled him.
His first official exhibition, barbershops notwithstanding, came in 1957, when some of his works were featured Panhellenic Art Exhibition at the Zappeion Megaron in Athens. His first solo show soon followed, housed by the Zygos gallery in 1960. Internationally, he exhibited in Alexandria, Paris, São Paulo, Frankfurt, Bologna, Florence, Venice, Genoa, Belgrade, New York, Stockholm and Tokyo, among others. After numerous exhibitions in Greece and abroad, in 2001, the President of the Republic, Constantine Stephanopoulos, awarded him the Order of the Phoenix.
As a poet, he published his first collection, The Night, in 2005. A second collected volume, Engr’s Violin, was published in 2010.
Mytaras passed away in 2017. In the summer of the following year, the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in Andros presented an exhibition to honour the artist, who sometimes struggled to generate unanimous appraisal, despite the popularity and respect he earned over the course of his lifetime.
