Michalis Economou Greek, 1888-1933

Private Collection, France

Economou initially went to Paris in 1906 to study architecture, but soon changed his mind and enrolled at the Académie des Beaux-Arts instead. The twenty years during which he lived and worked in France had a profound influence on his oeuvre. In particular the work of Manet and Matisse and their modern theories on composition and colour were adapted by the artist to suit his own individual artistic vision. While Manet maintained that the flat, two-dimensional surface of a painting was a pictoral space in its own right, Matisse advocated the value of colour as a self-sufficient means of expression. However as Aphrodite Kouria has pointed out "Whatever the artistic affinities Economou might have had with Western European artistic trends, the basic and essential characteristic of his art is his intensely personal style, the hallmark of a genuine temperament which sought to transform the facts of the preceptible world into images of inner truth." (Aphrodite Kouria, Michalis Economou: as individualistic interpreter of Greek landscapes, Zygos, Athens, 1983, p. 44)

Michalis Economou, Fishermen's Houses in Brittany, before 1926, oil on canvas @ National Gallery and Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens