You continue to captivate us with your work, with the way you handle colour, volume, and surface, as well as with your remarkable ability to connect with the viewer at first glance, leaving such a positive impression. How is the passage of time reflected in your work, and what gifts has maturity brought you as an artist?
I cannot really speak of maturity. I take small steps every year. I struggle with my impatience, my egocentrism, and my guilt. I hold on to my spontaneity, along with small doses of ambition.
Tell us about the exhibition you are preparing in collaboration with Zoumboulakis Galleries in Paris. How did it come about, and what will you be presenting there?
The solo exhibition in Paris came about through a proposal from Daphne Zoumboulakis, who is also curating it. I am not presenting anything entirely new in terms of subject matter; all the works are a continuation of what came before. I decided to approach these 12 or 13 new works—which are small in scale, partly because of the gallery space—as a more relaxed creative exercise and almost as a game. This was a challenge in itself, as I do not usually make works this small.
In any case, I paint things that are familiar to me, things I know well. I introduced some elements I have been using recently, such as leaves, mountains, the sun, and the sea—things I was seeing around me every day during my holidays.
What are your expectations for Paris, and what new horizons do you hope it will open up?
The exhibition in Paris is a great challenge, first of all because so much is happening around the visual arts. The city itself carries such a strong historical weight. Secondly, the real question is whether the work speaks to someone, whether it concerns them. I think that is what makes a work contemporary.
We often see you drawing together with your daughters in tender family moments. Is inspiration something that can emerge at any moment? Can something simple and everyday lead to something significant? What is your process—can you give us an example?
There is no specific process for inspiration. It finds you where you are working. It requires discipline and daily practice, hours in the studio, erasing, doubt, frustration, and satisfaction when something emerges that you had not imagined or expected—a happy accident.
What do you feel are your most important achievements so far?
A monograph of my work, published by The Greek Foundation last May.
You work across illustration, painting on ceramics, and music. What do you love doing most?
Painting, illustration, ceramics, music—and I would also add reading—are, for me, the tools that feed creative thinking and creative practice. Each has its own challenges and difficulties. When I get bored with one, I turn to another.
What would you like to create—a dream project?
I would really love to design book covers and album covers.
Who are your artists of the heart, and why have you chosen them?
These are my choices for this year, not necessarily in this order:
Franz Schubert, Joni Mitchell, Henri Matisse, Amy Sillman, James Baldwin, L. W. Beethoven, Richard Diebenkorn, Sandy Denny, Rachel Cusk, Anthony Caro.
Something we don’t know about you?
I find it difficult to rank things in order of importance, because as we grow older, we change—and hopefully for the better. Our experiences and priorities change, too. So there are things I did not understand or appreciate in the past that I now approach differently, while some things that once mattered to me no longer concern me at all.
Give us your own definition of beauty.
I’ll tell you something my daughter said to me this summer while we were listening to classical music and drawing: “When I listen to Mozart, I feel like I love someone.”
What do you consider authentic today?
Something accessible that does not claim its own authenticity.
Philippos Theodorides
« JEUX DES ECHOS »
Phillipos Theodorides presents the exhibition « Jeux des Échos» in Paris (Marais) -for the first time – in Galerie Basia Embiricos, during and in the context of Paris Design Week 2026.
In « Jeux des Echos » he will show a new body of paintings and ceramics in which forms and colours intertwine. The use of ceramics creates a continuous, subtle rhythm and invites a visual dialogue that reflects a perfect mastery of pictorial variations and tensions.
In this series of works by Theodorides, form does not repeat itself — it resonates. Each piece seems to bear the trace of another, like a silent memory running across the surface. Nothing is static: the forms respond to one another, shift and transform from one canvas to the next, creating a tangible continuity. The compositions are organized around a rigorous geometric language, in which lines, curves, and solid fields of color interact with one another, while dark masses and vibrant colors create a rhythmic tension that guides the viewer’ s gaze. The works suggest rather than depict, creating a game of “visual echoes.”
“Philippos Theodorides has developed a style influenced by the Bauhaus, Constructivism and Cubism, as well as by Sonia Delaunay and Anthony Caro. Using a variety of materials, he creates works with simple forms and vibrant colours, striking a unique balance between abstraction and figuration”*.
*excerpt from a text by Alkistis Tsabouraki, 2024.
About
Philippos Theodorides is born in 1978 in Cyprus. After studying at the University of Surrey, he continued his training at the Athens School of Fine Arts under the supervision of Professor Jannis Psychopedis (2003–2008). He works as a painter and illustrator, collaborating with various galleries and magazines. As an illustrator, he won the National Prize for Children’s Literature in 2014, as well as the EBGE Award for an advertising illustration (Bold Ogilvy & Mather) in 2016. He has held solo exhibitions in Athens and Cyprus, and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad. He works with the Zoumboulakis Gallery in Athens.
The exhibition *Jeux des Échos* is his first solo exhibition in Paris.
Opening on Friday 11 September from 6pm to 9pm
Exhibition from 11 to 26 September 2026
Exhibition curator: Daphne Zoumboulakis, Zoumboulakis Galleries
