The painter Loukas Venetoulias was born in Thessaloniki in 1930 and passed away in the same city in 1984.
He received his first painting lessons in Thessaloniki from N.G. Pentzikis. He studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1954 to 1958 under professors G. Moralis and S. Papaloukas.
He created works of critical realism, with the depiction of the urban landscape of Thessaloniki as his dominant theme, rendered realistically and avoiding any sense of the picturesque. During the Dictatorship period, human figures and mechanical forms served as symbols, contributing to the expression of critical messages. After the mid-1970s, his still lifes and landscapes of Santorini formed distinct series, to which he attributed symbolic significance and political undertones.
He also engaged in scenography, book illustration, and graphic arts.
He was a founding member and Vice President of the Association of Visual Artists of Northern Greece and was among the protagonists in the establishment of the Department of Visual and Applied Arts in Thessaloniki.
His work was presented in solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, particularly in the U.S.A. and Canada. He participated in Europalia in Brussels in 1982.
A retrospective of his work was organized at the Vafopoulio Cultural Center in 1985 and at the Teloglion Foundation in 2019.
In his memory, since 2014, the Teloglion Foundation organizes a biennial National Painting Competition for young artists (aged 18-39).