{"id":13,"date":"2016-09-09T17:51:58","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T14:51:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dimitrismaniotis.gr\/?page_id=13"},"modified":"2017-02-12T18:08:29","modified_gmt":"2017-02-12T15:08:29","slug":"biography","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.dimitrismaniotis.gr\/en\/biography\/","title":{"rendered":"Biography"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dimitris
Dimitris Maniotis<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Dimitris Maniotis
\nA self taught Greek painter of the 20th century<\/h3>\n

Dimitris Maniotis was born on July 10, 1923, in Odessa, Ukraine. His mother Olga Symeonova, a Russian woman of Italian descent, born in St. Petersburg, was trained to be a maid of honour in the tsar\u2019s court. His father Thomas Maniotis, an immigrant to St. Petersburg, was a tradesman. He met and got married to Olga in the beginning of 1910. Their first daughter Evgenia was born there.
\nWhen the October Revolution started in 1917, the couple found refuge in the south, in Odessa, in hopes that the Revolution would not expand and affect them. There, their second daughter Lisa was born but died a few years later from scarlet fever. Their son Jimma, a nickname for Dimitris, was born later in 1923.
\nThe couple tried to find a way to leave the Soviet Union but in the end they stayed there.<\/p>\n

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\"\u039a\u03b1\u03cd\u03ba\u03b1\u03c3\u03bf\u03c2<\/a>
\u039a\u03b1\u03cd\u03ba\u03b1\u03c3\u03bf\u03c2 (Kafkasos) 300x200cm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

His father was appointed to be in charge of the Siberian Taiga. Young Dimitris would have many memories of the wild Siberian nature; memories which he would later depict on canvas with exceptional liveliness, painting poplar-birch forests, bears and other animals, sometimes in wild and at others in tender moments but always with his apparent love for nature.<\/p>\n

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\"\u038c\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b1<\/a>
\u038c\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1\u03b1 \u039f\u03b4\u03b7\u03c3\u03c3\u03cc\u03c2 (Opera Odissos) 50x30cm<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Later on, Thomas Maniotis worked at the Odessa Opera Bistro. It is there that Dimitris heard opera and classical music for the first time; an art he would love almost as much as painting.<\/p>\n

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\"mitera_dimitri_manioti\"<\/a>
Dimitris Maniotis’ mother<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dimitris graduated from high school in Odessa. That is where his aptitude for painting was noticed and where he took his very first painting classes as an exceptional talent.<\/p>\n

During Stalin\u2019s rule, in 1939, his father refused to receive the Soviet citizenship and therefore was deported to Siberia. His family was torn apart since his sister Evgenia had already received the Soviet citizenship through marriage and remained in Odessa, whereas Dimitris and his mother ended up as refugees in Greece.<\/p>\n

His mother died of hunger in 1941, during the Axis occupation and Dimitris was saved by the then mayor of Syros, Thodoros Karakalas. He, being a man of art and intellect and having detected young Jimma\u2019s passion and great talent in painting, gave him food and a roof over his head and provided him with painting materials.<\/p>\n

After the war was over, he moved to Athens, where, despite his young age, he was admitted by exception to the School of Fine Arts because of his outstanding talent. Being always however a liberal spirit with an explosive temperament, he could not stand formalism and his professors\u2019 comments that he used too much red (communist) colour. So, he dropped out of school.<\/p>\n

For a short period of time, he studied under the painter Spyros Vikatos and was taught sculpture by Vasos Falireas.<\/p>\n

In 1948, he got married to Katerina Kervanidou (child of an Asia Minor refugee couple) whom he had met on Syros. She studied at the time at the Ralleion Academy and became a teacher. In 1949, their first son was born. Dimitris Maniotis feeling love and gratitude to Theodoros Karakalas named his son Theodoros, and the boy was baptized by him as well. At Christmas 1950, his daughter Olga was born and named after his mother.<\/p>\n

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