Lot 5: Michalis Economou Greek, 1888-1933 , landscape with cypress trees

signed l.l. oil on flannel

45 by 55cm., 17 3/4 by 21 3/4 in.

Aphrodite Kouria, M. Economou 1884-1933
, Athens, 2001, no. 112, p. 109 & 161, illustrated twice

Economou initially went to Paris in 1906 to study architecture, but soon changed his mind and enrolled at the Academie 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 individual artistic vision. While Manet maintained that the flat, two-dimensional surface of a painting was a pictorial 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 characterisic of his art is his intensely personal style, the hallmark of a genuine temperament which sought to transform the facts of the perceptible world into images of inner truth." (Aphrodite Kouria, Michalis Economou: As Individualistic Interpreter of Greek Landscapes , Zygos, Athens, 1983, p. 44).