Nick Mourtzakis

Nick Mourtzakis (b. 1951) is Melbourne-based artist and teacher. Mourtzajkis migrated to Melbourne with his Greek family in the early 1950s and trained at the Preston Institute of Technology and Mercer House Teachers' College in the early 1970s. Having taught art continuously since 1975, he is now a lecturer at RMIT. His first solo show was at Pinacotheca gallery in 1998. Two years later he was awarded the William Dobell Prize for Drawing from the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and also the Hellenic Distinction Award for his contribution to the arts from the Greek-Australian Association of Victoria. In 2004 he gained a master's degree from the Victorian College of the Arts for work on cubism, which culminated in an exhibition of drawings, The Analytical Portrait. Although he is a notoriously slow worker - frustrating his former dealer, the late Georges Mora, who could not induce him to collate works for an exhibition - Mourtzakis held several solo exhibitions in mid-2005, including Slow Burn: The Art of Nick Mourtzakis at the RMIT Gallery and The Figure: Drawings by Nick Mourtzakis at the MARS gallery.