Kolefas Yannis

Studies Personal exhibitions (national or international) / Artwork Professional activity Teaching experience

Year of birth:

1927

Year of death:

1986

Place of birth:

Stavroskiadi, Pogoni

Studies

He graduated from the painting workshop, under Professor Yannis Moralis, at the Athens School of Fine Arts.

He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence with a scholarship granted by the Italian Government; he attended postgraduate studies on painting and mosaic restoration at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ravenna, with a scholarship granted by the Hellenic Scholarship Foundation.

Personal exhibitions (national or international) / Artwork

Yannis Kolefas, using his knowledge, his love and dedication, brought back to Greece the art of mosaic making with many private, group and international exhibitions as well as publications on mosaic making and restoring.

During his travels, he used his brushes to outline the beauty of the landscapes that he visited. Therefore, his original work is full of Greek landscapes and colours of the Greek nature.

Professional activity

Mosaics conservator

In 1965, he was employed by the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens for maintaining and preserving the Byzantine mosaics in Greece and abroad.

In 1985 he finishes the mosaic in the Lecture Hall of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (75 sq.m.).

For a period of 20 years, he traveled around Greece in order to preserve the most important mosaics, in between those located at Pella.

He also preserved the mosaics in Porta-Panaghia Trikala, in the New Monastery of Chios, in Ag. Dimitrios in Thessaloniki, in Rotonda, in the Monastery of Dafni, in Nicopolis, in Delos, in Rhodes, in Filippoi, in Olympia and in Jerusalem.

He taught at the Maintenance Department of the Byzantine Museum and in 1974 he was elected professor of mosaics at the Athens School of Fine Arts

Teaching experience

He taught at the Maintenance Department of the Byzantine Museum and in 1974 he was elected professor of mosaics at the Athens School of Fine Arts