One of Greece’s most famous artists, painter Alekos Fassianos died at the age of 86 on Sunday in Athens after a long illness.

“Greece no longer has with it a great artist who lavished color on its daily life,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said about the artist whose paintings were exhibited the world over, including Paris, London, Tokyo and New York.

Fassianos, described by some as Greece’s Picasso, was a graduate of the Athens Academy of Fine Arts, and moved to Paris in 1960 to study lithography at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

He adopted a personal anthropocentric style, influenced by abstract art. “All the work of Fassianos, the colors that filled his canvases, the multidimensional forms that dominated his paintings, exude Greece,” said Culture Minister Lina Mendoni. Fassianos leaves behind his wife, Mariza, and two daughters.

This article was previously published at ekathimerini.com.