About the artist

After his first painting lessons in Egypt, under the German Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach, he went to Vienna, where he studied at the RoyalAcademy of Fine Arts (1897-1903) and at the Conservatory. In 1903 he visited Greece for the first time. From 1909 to 1911 he lived in Paris andlater on Corfu, where he became a member of the ‘Group of Nine’. He acquired Greek citizenship and settled in Greece, becoming a memberof the ‘Techni’ group of artists (1917). He held a retrospective exhibition at the Zappeion Hall and received the Greek National Award forExcellence in the Arts and Letters (1920); he also garnered a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris (1937). In the following year heheld a retrospective at the Venice Biennale. After an unsuccessful attempt in 1923 at the post, in 1929 he became a professor at the Schoolof Fine Arts; he resigned in 1947 and became reclusive in his home. In his absence, he was awarded the Commander of King George I (1954)and the Gold Commander of the Phoenix (1965).   One of the founding fathers of 20th-century Greek painting and the teacher of many younger artists, he shaped, through the vision ofan ideal Greece and the demand to determine a national identity, a purely personal idiom, marked by purity and spirituality. Historical,mythological, allegorical and religious themes, alongside landscapes, portraits and still-life paintings, make up the body of his work, inwhich he used types of ancient and Byzantine art, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, Symbolism and Jugendstil.