Ioanna Limniou

Artist Profile

Ioanna Limniou (b. 1987, Alexandroupoli, Greece). Lives and works in Athens, Greece.

Ioanna Limniou is a painter who works mainly in oil on canvas, alongside crayons, watercolour pencils and markers. She paints figures, animals, landscapes and still lifes. Her sources are rural life in Greece, traditional Greek imagery, literature and poetry, and her own observation of town and countryside.

She builds her images by layering intense colour with loose, expressive brushwork, and approaches each painting as a story with its own characters. Many works show people and animals living and working side by side: farm workers in the fields, swimmers, boats, dogs and seagulls. Earlier still lifes include Purple Vase (2020). The paintings in Though as a ghost, I shall lightly tread, the summer fields (2024), at The Breeder, Athens, depicted agricultural and communal life. They included works up to 170 × 150 cm, such as Hoffman (2024). Bedtime Stories (2024), at Enari Gallery, Amsterdam, was painted largely in shades of blue and showed sea, stone and summer scenes on the Greek islands, among them Many Swimmers (2024).

Limniou studied fashion design at Veloudakis Fashion School, Athens, and art and antiquities conservation at DIEK Ilioupolis. She then completed an integrated MA at the Athens School of Fine Arts in 2022. She held her first solo exhibitions in 2024, at The Breeder, Athens, and Enari Gallery, Amsterdam, followed by Road Trip at Swivel Gallery, New York, in 2025. Her work was included in In a Bright Green Field, presented by the DESTE Foundation and the New Museum at the Benaki Museum, Athens, in 2025. She has shown at Frieze London with The Breeder and is represented by Enari Gallery.