Constantin Xenakis (1931 – 2020) was born in Cairo, Egypt, where he took his first steps in painting. He studied architecture and interior design at the École Supérieure des Arts Modernes in Paris (1956–1961) and painting at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. His first solo exhibition was held in Sweden (1969, Sôdertalje Konsthal).

In 1970, he went to Berlin on a DAAD scholarship, where he taught at Schiller College and the Hochschule fur Bildende Künste. At that time, he also presented his first solo exhibition in Greece (1971, Goethe Institute, Athens), which, during the dictatorship, served as a bold intervention on an artistic and political level. From 1973, while settled in France, he taught at the École Normale Supérieure de l'Enseignement Technique (Cachan), participated in committees of educational institutions, and developed intense artistic and exhibition activity in the international arena, with dozens of solo exhibitions and a large number of group exhibitions.

In 1996, he was honored with the Delmas Prize from the Institut de France. Since 1995, he has been dividing his time between Paris and Athens. In 1996, honoring his Egyptian origins, he presented a retrospective exhibition in Alexandria and Cairo entitled "The Return of the Artist: 1958-1996." In Greece, he exhibited his autobiographical series of works entitled "The Book of Life" in three parts (1995, 1997, 2003), while in 2003, a retrospective exhibition of his works was held in MoMUS, the State Museum of Contemporary Art, in Thessaloniki. Two monographs on his work were published in Greek in 1995 and 2009.