He graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts in 1936 and in 1937 went to Rome with Nikos Nikolaou to study mosaic on scholarship from the Academy of Athens, but he soon moved to Paris. There, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and the École des Arts et Métiers. He returned to Greece with the outbreak of World War II. In 1947 he became professor in the preliminary section of the Athens School of Fine Arts and ten years later in the department of painting, where he remained until 1983. His first solo exhibition was in 1959; he participated several times in group and international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1958) and the Tapestry Biennale in Lausanne (1965, 1972). He became a member of the International Institute of Arts and Letters (1962) and was conferred the Commander of the Phoenix (1979) and the Excellence in Arts and Letters Award of the Academy of Athens (1979). He also worked as a printmaker, potter, illustrator and stage designer, with the National Theatre of Greece, the Greek Dance Theatre and the Art Theatre. In 1988 there was a retrospective exhibition of his work at the National Gallery in Athens; this was followed by the artist making a large donation to the museum, which was exhibited in its entirety after his death (2011).

He was a most influential artist in the development of Greek post-war art, through his work and long teaching career. His figurative painting, in both its naturalist and geometric periods, steadily revolved around the interlinked notions of eros and thanatos.