Profile

Visual Artist and Professor Emeritus in Composition at the University of West Attica, Athens GR.

F. Dean of the Faculty of Applied Arts & Culture

Harris Pressas studied in Italy at the School of Fine Arts in Florence where he graduated with a first class degree with distinction. Thereupon he specialised in painting and photography following two-year specialisation courses at the School. He lived in Florence for eight years. His work spans Sculpture, Constructions, Painting, and Fine Art Photography.  From 1987 until 2017 he taught at the Department of Photography and Audiovisual Arts at the Technological Educational Institute (T.E.I.) of Athens.  Harris Pressas has been elected President of the Photography & Audiovisual Arts Department for five terms (2003, 2006, 2008, 2014 and 2016) and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts & Design (T.E.I.) for two terns (2015-2016 and 2016-2017) Since February 2018 Harris Pressas is Professor at the University of West Attica, Athens-Greece, Department of Photography & Audiovisual Arts, Faculty of Applied Arts & Culture where he teaches courses in “Picture Composition”, “Visual Arts Applications” as well as in “Art History”. H.P. in September 2019 has been elected Dean of the Faculty of Applied Arts & Culture - University of West Attica, Athens-Greece. Since 2015 he teaches “Compositional Structure Analysis in Still & Motion Picture” as part of the Postgraduate Programme “Video Production, Audiovisual Media & Motion Graphics” 

Pressas has been widely exhibited in 17 solo and 39 group exhibitions and has attended 16 art symposiums and events internationally. His works (some of them created in situ as in Venice-Italy, Luleo-Sweden, Patras - Greece, Saint Égrève - France, etc) can be seen in public and private collections in Greece and abroad, in the municipality of Saint-Égrève -France, in Patras-Greece, in Pingyao-China, at LTCP of NTUA, and at TEI of Athens.

At the 1st Sculpture Symposium of the Municipality of Patras in 2002 his sculpture composition “Exodus-Nike” won the first place and was installed at the «Three Allies» central square of the city.

Pressas work has been repeatedly cited by numerous scholars, art historians and art critics in Greece and abroad.

For his art corpus as well as for his theoretical writings and his published works he received a doctorate equivalence in “Fine Art Composition and Applications” by the Scientific Council of the National Institute of Technological Education (I.T.E.) in Greece. Since 1995 Pressas has taught at a number of European Universities, giving Lectures and Tutorials and holding Workshops and Portfolio Reviews annually. For eight consecutive years, between 1997 and 2005, Pressas gave lectures, tutorials and held workshops as Visiting Professor at the Kent Institute of Art and Design (as of 2005 UCA) as part of the MA Fine Art and MFA (International Practice) Programmes at the School of Fine Art.

He is the author of two art theory books Composing: Basic Principles of Picture Composition and Fine Art Applications: Creating with Parallel Expressive Media published in Greek by ION Editions. Thanks to the Municipal of Patras also the illustrated book Carnival of Patras has been published in 1990, as well as of the multimedia DVD Space-time Fluidity II published by the “Patras European Capital of Culture 2006” Organisation.

In 2017 Pikramenos Editions published an illustrated book with his works, among others, in photopainting and "photocinegraphy", an original technique developed by H.P.

Member of the Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece.

Member of the Organizing Committee & member of the Scientific Council of the 1st Scientific Congress “Aesthetics and Ethics” of the Faculty of Fine Arts & Design - T.E.I. of Athens.  Athens – June 2015

Member of the Organizing Committee & member of the Scientific Council of the 2nd  Scientific Congress “Aesthetics in the New Digital Era” of the Faculty of Fine Arts & Design - T.E.I. of Athens.  Athens – June 2016

Spoken languages: Greek, English, Italian.

Born in Patras - GREECE.

Teaching Experience >>