Aris Kalaizis
1966– · Greek-German figurative painter associated with the New Leipzig School
Aris Kalaizis (Leipzig, 1966) is a Greek-German figurative painter associated with the New Leipzig School. The son of Greek political émigrés who arrived in Germany after the Greek Civil War, he grew up in Leipzig, where he trained first as an offset printer and then as a photo technician before beginning painting studies in 1992 at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts under Arno Rink and his assistant Neo Rauch. He graduated summa cum laude in 1997 and was Rink's master student until 2000.
His international recognition followed his participation in the Venice Biennale and the fourth Guangzhou Triennial, where he was given a large room for eight big canvases. His most notable exhibition was "The Double View" at Greiz palace, where he set historic rooms against modern art. In 2014–15 he painted "The Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew", which has hung in Frankfurt Cathedral since 2015. In recent years his references have included the Baroque painter Jusepe de Ribera and Francis Bacon.
His method is deliberately slow. He starts from dreams that shape an inner image, builds models or searches the outside world for a matching setting, takes preparatory photographs and writes his ideas as a screenplay. His paintings, of which he completes about five a year, show idealized inner worlds in constant tension between the real and the dreamlike. The American critic Carol Strickland coined the term "sottorealism" to describe this approach. His legacy lies in offering an alternative to the mass production of much contemporary art.