“I see his paintings as a challenge for an inner voyage, an opportunity for a resurrection of the gaze - a prolongation of real life. His compositions are structured around two opposite poles: tenderness and a sturdy rhythm; a sense for detail and understanding of the whole; a kind of sentimental escape to mirthful images, as Kosmas Politis would put it, and a preoccupation with form, represented in an unadorned and solid fashion. His paintings keep alive the memory of those places he fell in love with in the past or create novel seas for new journeys. Here plasticity is achieved via abstractive processes, and elsewhere a tiny light - one catalytic brushstroke - unveils a well-hidden secret. His heavy blues are electrified with orange iridescences and his reds never leave his blacks or dark greens unaccompanied.”

"Yannis Stavrou is a painter who touches upon the city's metaphysical tissue. An offspring himself of the lucky generation, which witnessed the historical heart-rending moments of Greek urban centers, and more closely so in his city of Thessaloniki, he takes us by the hand, striding with confident strokes back to our legendary childhood evoked by his images; deep down into the bottomless hollow of Thermaikos harbour, where the massive metal shapes of ships are hovering all aloof, emerging through the midst of cracking-dawn's fog."