Elly S. Mitzis was among the first Cypriot women to study art. A contributing factor to this was the circumstance that she came from a wealthy bourgeois family from Larnaca, with a Cypriot father and a Viennese mother. Her cultivated family environment helped so that Mitzis would not be deprived of a university education, which was the case for the majority of Cypriot women at the time. Thanks to her Austrian mother, she studied at the Vienna Akademie der Bildenden Künste, graduating in 1958.

In parallel to her career as a teacher in secondary education, Mitzis displayed a prolific artistic activity, especially during the first years of the Republic of Cyprus and up to 1974. She began to present her work at group exhibitions in 1959 and held her first solo exhibition in 1965. Furthermore, she was among the first Cypriot artists to show their work outside Cyprus. The greater part of her works is inspired by her life experiences in Cyprus. Her favourite subjects were landscapes and portraits of women. In terms of style, she worked within the framework of Impressionism.

Thιs oil painting Landscape of Larnaca, is a typical example of Mitzis’ landscape work. The leading role in this canvas belongs to colour and the way in which it shapes its relationship with the light. So as to reinforce the brightness of the work, the painter opted for pale colour tones. Light permeates and fragments the form, achieving a sense of movement. Mitzis developed her subject on the canvas by using warm colours for the foreground and cool ones for the middle ground, thus creating a shallow depth.