The painter Nikos Kessanlis was born in Thessaloniki in 1930 and passed away in Athens in 2004.
He apprenticed under K. Spyropoulos (1944–1948) and studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1948–1955) under Yannis Moralis. In 1947, he continued his studies on a scholarship at the Istituto Centrale del Restauro in Rome. He remained in Paris from 1959 until 1981, when he returned to Greece. In Paris, he became associated with the Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism) movement and Pierre Restany. He followed a shared life and career path with sculptor Chryssa Romanou from 1968 onwards.
In 1964, alongside V. Caniaris and Daniil, he participated in the landmark exhibition for the history of Greek art, “Proposals for a New Greek Sculpture”, at the La Fenice theater in Venice.
From 1960, he became interested in the autonomous use of materials, both as accumulated matter from industrial remains of modern civilization and as actions of ejecting them from artistic into real space, creating tragically distorting-expressionist images with violently crumpled hard materials. From 1961, his long-term engagement with photography began, following the compositional process of assemblage, while from 1963, he participated in the Mec-Art (Mechanical Art) movement, applying photomechanical methods. In 1965, he started the series “Phantasmagoria” and “Anamorphoses”, in which the effects of light create fictitious sculptures on the borders of reality and illusion.
In 1982, he was elected professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he taught until 1997.
He also dealt with theoretical issues of art, publishing articles in Greek magazines.
He presented his work in numerous solo exhibitions (Athens; Obelisco, Rome 1957, 1959, 1965; Venice Biennale 1988, etc.) and group exhibitions (Panhellenic Exhibition 1987; Venice Biennale 1958, 1976; São Paulo Biennale 1961, 1963, etc.).