Vasilis Periklis Dimitriou was born on Feb. 18, 1936, in Pogoniani, a village in northern Greece, to Periklis and Konstantina (Douka) Dimitriou. His father was a resort and restaurant supervisor; his mom, a homemaker. He grew up penniless throughout World Warfare II in Kypseli, an Athens suburb.
His father, a fighter within the Greek resistance, was usually away from house because the German Military superior. When Vasilis was 8, Nazi troops captured his father and took him away to be executed beside a mass grave. He miraculously survived and made his method house coated in blood, solely to vanish from the boy’s life once more as he rejoined the resistance. To bide time, Vasilis started drawing on sidewalks.
He stumbled into portray film posters after the battle ended. He and his mates had been climbing a tree to look at movies at an out of doors theater when the projectionist caught him and took him to the supervisor. As a substitute of throwing him out, nonetheless, the supervisor supplied him work in change for watching motion pictures. When the supervisor found that Vasilis had a expertise for drawing, he invited him to attempt his hand at portray film billboards.
“My mom mentioned, ‘In the event you turn into a painter, we’ll starve and die poor,” Mr. Dimitriou mentioned. However he grabbed the possibility.
He’s survived by his spouse, Angeliki Dimitriou; his daughter, Konstantina Dimitriou; and a grandson. Impressed by his work, Virginia Axioti, a member of the household that runs the Athinaion, will proceed to color billboards for the theater, Mr. Giannopoulos mentioned.
Mr. Dimitriou labored silently and methodically, climbing ladders and squatting on stools. To color his posters he constructed a low-slung stucco atelier in his yard with one wall made to the precise dimensions of the Athinaion’s billboards — an oblong floor 42 toes lengthy and eight toes excessive. Every bit, painted on thick brown paper, took three to 4 days to finish and was then pasted over the earlier one (although some have been preserved and saved for infrequent exhibitions).
