Lot 31: MICHALIS ECONOMOU GREEK, 1888-1933

SIGNED AND DATED (MAKER'S MARKS)
signed l.r.

39.2 by 55.5 cm., 15 1/4 by 21 1/2 in.

oil on linen laid down on board

Aphrodite Kouria, Michalis Economou, Athens, 2001, pp. 147 & 256, no. 100, illustrated

Private Collection, Athens

Painted circa 1927, the present work is a typical example of Economou's abstract landscapes, displaying the characteristic delicate sense of atmosphere, which the artist conveyed through the use of a restraint palette of earthy tones.

"All the subjects of Economou's work are taken from nature. In his earliest paintings - landscapes mainly from the South of France but also from Greece - the weathered walls of the houses and mills, the arches of the old bridges and the rocks are 'structured' with dun or greyish tones, splashed uninhibitedly but with a masteful touch on card, linen or canvas, sometimes almost sculptured, at other times as if wiped smooth." (Aphrodite Kouris, Michalis Economou: an individualistic interpreter of Greek landscapes, Zygos, Athens, 1983, p. 44). In the present work, the use of this technique as well as the blending of colours and contours lends the painting a hazy, etheral quality. Within Economou's often almost monochromatic compositions, colour, as a vehicle to convey feelings and create atmosphere, took supremecy. " Even those subjects which could be used as narrative elements appear in his paintings in a purely chromatic role. Thus the human figures in his paintings - when they do appear - breathe no spark of life into the work: they are merely an excuse for a small area of colour or a patch of brushwork" (ibid.).

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 radically 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 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 artistic temperament which sought to transform the facts of the perceptible world into images of an inner truth." (ibid.).