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PerifimouPerifimou (Alexander Georgiou) was born in 1916 in rural Cyprus where he had little formal education. He emigrated to Britain in 1935, working as a chef and tailor until the War, when he served in North Africa, Italy and Malta. After years of ill health, he became a warder at the Royal Academy and then the Tate Gallery, where the only artist to make an impression on him was William Blake. He began to draw, aged 59, to alleviate the boredom of the job and was spotted at work by Victor Musgrave, founder of the Outsider Archive, who called Perifimou a 'visionary poet'. He died in 2001.
Works by Perifimou were included in England & Co's exhibition Obsessive Visions: Art Outside the Mainstream. In 2008, he was one of the artists chosen for the major exhibition of British Outsider Art at Musée La Halle Saint Pierre in Paris.
