Fassianos himself relates: “For five years I applied myself to drawing ancient heads and nude models. I can’t say I didn’t learn anything from this – quite the opposite.

Our teacher Moralis had an influence on us both as an artist and as a human being. We learned to observe the effects of darkness on light and vice versa as well as how objects changed shape as the light changed. We also learned to compare things. But I was always thinking of saints with their haloes, their staffs, their swords, their varied attire, and the red or white horses that jumped over flame-blowing dragons.

I was thinking less of the Cycladic figurines at the time.

I also liked Japanese art and Indian tantric painting. But I never felt the mysticism. I started painting people again in uniforms and ornaments in gardens. They were unmoving, they were expressionless and held flowers.

Later these small figures of people that I painted in uniforms began to dissolve, to become colored beings with flowers all around, sometimes pleasant looking, sometimes terrifying

And now the ones I paint hold flaming swords like the Byzantine saints. But they are untainted creatures from my imagination, just as they first issued from dark churches. I like red and blue volumes, but not abstraction.

Color should always have meaning!

-Alekos Fassianos, Athens 1964