Featured in Art Calendar and Manhattan International, Stavros Andriotis has enjoyed increasing critical success since moving from his native Greece to the United States, where he honed his talents at the International Center of Photography.  A past winner of the International Competition for Visual Artists, Stavros Andriotis lives and works in New York City.

The Italian artist Sandro Bisonni invites us into a dramatic, natural, magical world with his intense, fiery brushstrokes. Embracing the elements of the fantastical, his work can be dark, reminiscent of a fairy-tale forest. Though whimsical, there's nothing childlike about these abstract oil paintings. Bisonni gives the viewer the sense of stepping into a dream, of paths untraveled, ends unknown. Waves of greens and grays and the light that penetrates them are almost clues, imaginary patterns to follow, that may lead only to more questions. At one moment his paintings may conjure a skyline, or a road, or a breaking wave, but at another glance they represent an entirely different, new idea.

Bisonni's background in philosophy informs these subtle concepts. Influenced primarily by the American painter William Congdon, Sandro Bisonni's own voice is vibrant and moving. He offers us a surprising approach, encompassing in his paintings both the real and imagined.  Bisonni does not allow us to hesitate - we must delve into the world he creates, unknown but possible.

Antonio Nicola Ciervo’s vivid, rhythmic, and playful painting proposes the possibility of an idealized urban utopia, free of conventional associations of urban blight and chaos. The warm, cheerful, and even surreal palette introduces a harmonious two-dimensional space that conveys the geometric and rational structure of the city and its quarters. Ciervo dubs this work “UrbanArchiPainting” and defines the idea as a reconstruction of a renewed urban landscape with its facades, its roofs, its squares and streets, districts where “colors become heat.”

Born in 1953 in Moiano, Italy, trained and employed as an architect, Ciervo appropriates the architect’s idealized vision of the potential for a harmonious urbanity and employs it in a “two-dimensional system where the main part is devolved to structure, connectivity and juxtaposition of shapes and colors.” The third dimension arises from the pleasant sensations and imaginations in playful response to the gaze he proposes—as epicenters of culture, design, and diversity, the cities of Ciervo shine with optimism in the face of chaos.

Carlo De Angelis began as a professional photographer.  But it was not long before his imagination forced him beyond the boundaries inherent of the camera by itself—or as he puts it, "to go beyond the modes of expression traditionally typical of photography."  But instead of letting technology move him to excess, De Angelis adheres to a self-imposed aesthetic mission statement:  "to highlight simple, small, introspective moments that arise from the changing complexities that surround me."  The result is a body of work that tends to focus in one way or another on the superimposition of human forms onto natural and architectural backgrounds.  Whether starkly black and white or deeply drenched in a wave of color, De Angelis pays great attention to the contrast of shade against shade or angle and contour, communicating the importance of one moment's dissolution into the next, how one movement inevitably becomes another.

Over the last few years Carlo De Angelis has been featured in an increasing number of group and solo exhibitions in his native Italy, where he continues to live and work.

The frailties of human nature are exposed in the works of Gerasimos Galiatsatos.  Whether struggling with grief or just sitting pensively, the subjects of these paintings are wrought with raw emotion.  Galiatsatos does not shy away from the reality of life, but rather shows it in all its beautiful and painful splendor.       

Dark, melancholy colors fit the mood of the subjects.  Black dominates Galiatsatos’ works, looming in the backdrop and creeping in as shadows.  Dark browns and ochre, along with grayish whites, stand in as the secondary colors that form the more-often-than-not skeletal figures of the paintings.  Subtle swirls of paint impart the dizziness of life.  Splatters of red reveal the passion and the fury infused within one’s blood.  There is a hurried collision of colors.  Flung over the more organized subject-matter, these fits of color explore the line that separates absolute freedom from the unaccountability of one's actions.  The thick layer of acrylic paint demonstrates the complexity of emotion. Galiatsatos lives in Athens, Greece.

Luigi Galligani’s impressive collection of sculptures carries on the legacy of ancient storytelling and mythology. From his captivating Venus to his seductive series of sirens, Galligani has devoted much of his craft to the human figure and capturing the poetic beauty of the mythological nude. The result is a mesmerizing collection of classical subjects, molded by modern perspective. Although born in the same region that gave birth to the Italian Renaissance, Galligani expresses a greater fascination with the Mediterranean and Greek mythology. His collection represents a number of mythological characters and stories, calling to mind themes of seduction, vengeance, passion and death. His pieces are commanding yet graceful and as alluring as the myth of the siren’s song which he so beautifully recreates.

Galligani’s work has been collected across four continents. He’s been widely exhibited and his work can be viewed in banks, museums and other institutions throughout Italy. He works primarily with bronze and terra cotta.

Hariclia Michailidou’s sleek, computer generated collages adeptly merge science and imagination. Michailidou accesses a galactic realm that has the trappings of the universe as we known it: the circular movement in her work recalls start clusters or galaxies. But Michailidou is most intrigued by what we don’t know about the universe. Her vibrantly colored images, filled with particles and fragments of the cosmos, function like galactic mirages, using familiar symbols to re-imagine the infinitely evolving universe. The lulling, rhythmic qualities of Michailidou’s work echo the sublime ideas she explores. Her collages capture life’s endlessly circular processes of growth and re-navigation. By using familiar imagery to probe what we, as humans, can not fully grasp, Michailidou is able to bridge the gap between the conscious and unconscious, depicting worlds that are at once unreal and believable.

Born in Greece, Hariclia Michailidou studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Académie Royale d'Architecture, and the Institute Saint-Luc in Belgium. She also studied Architecture at the Pratt Institute in New York and has exhibited internationally.

These tragicomic caricatures never spill over into parody though. Michelis’ works maintain a somber gravity, uncomfortable forms whose tortured glares evoke a grand melancholy. Ultimately, Michelis transcends the dimensions of classical Greek sculpture, but nonetheless achieves its expressive eloquence. Fantastic, mythic characters reflect identifiable human desires and foibles, but the elegance of Michelis’ forms – the graceful manipulation of that epic material – continually evokes the weight of tradition.

Maria Pia Taverna blends her innate stylistic sense with brilliantly conceived hues to captivate the viewer with a hypnotic visual dynamism.  Expressing her emotions through a unique manipulation of color and line, Taverna creates works of art which transcend the realm of aesthetic beauty to an emotionally evocative exploration of the human psyche.  Her hybrid method of digital imaging and classical printing techniques results in a highly emotive work, evidencing the influence of artists from throughout the annals of history.  From the psychological explorations of the Surrealists to the drama of the Expressionists and the precision of the Classical painters, Taverna's works display the artist's own deep understanding of art and art history.  

Having exhibited her artwork throughout Europe, Mari Pia Taverna has received critical acclaim for her unique artistic perspective and has trained in the ateliers of several significant artists and designers.  A native of Italy, she currently lives and works in the city of Turin.

Employing a simplified palette of muted hues, primarily in the grayscale shades of black and white, Charis Vakalopoulos paints sleekly simplified figures imbued with the classical theories and ideology of his Greek heritage.  Although rendered in two-dimensional format, Vakalopoulos’ weighty figures possess a sculptural sensuality: each curve, muscle, and gesture emerges from the paint as if carved from marble or cast from bronze.  As Vakalopoulos elegantly captures the essential lines of the body with his brush, even the most reduced of forms resonates with a distinctly human energy.  Drawing on his innate yet informed classical influences, Vakalopoulos’ paintings reflect the artist’s exquisite sense of visual balance and pictorial arrangement.  By expertly manipulating the aesthetic of asymmetrical balance, Vakalopoulos recalls the monumentally important use of the contrapposto stance present in Greek Classical sculpture.

Born and raised in the historic city of Thessaloniki, Charis Vakalopoulos continues to live and work in Greece.