Born in the cosmopolitan Cairo in 1931, where he lived until he was twenty years old. Restless spirit and multitalented, he settled in Paris in 1951, the bastion of the Western culture, where he had a double career as hairdresser and independent artist, while being a fierce collector. The two cities, capitals of fashion, arts and letters, influenced him and helped shape him as a human, in his years of creativity. He would spend his weekdays at the Carita Coiffeur Salon, where famous clients from all over the world were swarming in. In the nights he was tirelessly working in his Montparnasse atelier of the Paris Municipality, while during his days off, he was visiting antique stores for objects that would enrich his admirable collection. In 1992 he bought the Venetian monastery Santa Maria della Misericordia in Chania, which would become his home, coiffeur salon, cultural center, and eventually the Carlos Cambelopoulos Foundation, his life’s work.


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Greek sculptor, engraver, painter. A personality of international fame, Carlos Cambelopoulos assimilated strong cultural elements, while he developed a rich creative activity studying the stone, terracotta, bronze, as well as the field of Monotype, which established him as painter and engraver.

As a kid in Cairo, he would always carry a notebook where he would constantly sketch. In the beginning, he was self-taught, later he attended evening classes in the Ecole d’Arts, in Paris, and eventually he taught privately, for thirty years.

He was honoured for his sculptures in 1969, in the European Biennale, won first prize by the City of Paris, in 1980 and was exhibiting world-wide, ever since. In 2008, he was honoured as Face of Europe, by the “Arte” television network of France and Germany.

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Carlos Cambelopoulos developed into a master of the hairdressing art, having started at the age of fourteen, cleaning sinks in one of the biggest salons of Cairo, across from the Opera House. Thanks to his talent, he soon became responsible for dealing with the wigs and the hair of the Cairo Opera singers, essentially doing actual sculpting with his hands, as he himself used to say.

At the age of twenty he got a diploma attending a hairdresser’s course in Paris, while he decided to live there. In Cairo, he had left behind an exclusive clientele, such as Farouks’ princesses and Lebanese aristocrats.

In Paris, initially he worked at Fernand Aubry Salon with clients from the arts and he later moved on to work for the famous Carita sisters, Maison de Beauté et de Haute Coiffure.

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