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Left: a decorative tray from the Svenskt Tenn x Alekos Fassianos Estate Collection. Right: at the Alekos Fassianos Museum in Athens, the artist’s bird fresco is displayed above his brushes and paints. Courtesy of Marco Arguello and Svenskt Tenn |
Alekos Fassianos is often called the Picasso of Greece because his colorful work provokes the same type of instant recognition. Fassianos’s visual vocabulary of saints (his grandfather was a parish priest in Athens), sailors and birds conjures images of his homeland. Deeply beloved in Greece, Fassianos’s art has appeared in top museums but also in product partnerships, such as on limited-edition glass water bottles and books he designed for Olympic Airlines. Now, three years after the artist’s death, his estate is partnering with Svenskt Tenn, the Swedish interior design company, to create a limited-edition collection of home décor. According to Victoria Fassianou, Alekos’s daughter and the founding director of the Alekos Fassianos Estate and Museum, it’s a natural fit. “My father was a multifaceted artist,” she says. “Apart from working on a canvas, paper or different materials, he was really passionate about creating everything he lived in, from his clothes to his furniture.” The items in this collection include table linens featuring Fassianos’s iconic bird — a symbol of escape, according to the artist — and cushions showing his windswept profile portraits. All are available online starting June 5 as well as at Svenskt Tenn’s Stockholm flagship, which is hosting an exhibition bringing together the work of Fassianos and Josef Frank, the Austrian-born architect and designer, from June 5 through Aug. 27. To go deeper into Fassianos’s world, visit the Alekos Fassianos Museum in Athens, or the Alekos Fassianos Atelier on the Cycladic island of Kea, open June 5 through Sept. 14. From $48, svenskttenn.com.