Lot 25: Michalis Economou (Greek, 1888-1933) Martigues 33 x 46 cm.

Michalis Economou
(Greek, 1888-1933)
Martigues signed 'M. Economou' (lower right)oil on canvas 33 x 46 cm.

We are grateful to Aphroditi Kouria for her assistance in authenticating this lot.A recent find and important addition to the artist's Paris oeuvre, this evocative representation of weather-beaten seaside houses rendered in highly textured forms, is a vision of 'humble monumentality' suspended between real time and memory. During his twenty-year stay in the French capital (1906-1926), Economou travelled extensively throughout Bretagne, Normandy and the south of France, especially the area around Martigues,1 depicting quaint streets, weathered houses and old mills captured in a wide range of subtle tonalities. Although these monolithic seaside structures have a sculptural quality that articulates a sense of stability and permanence, the whole subject generates a poetic atmosphere more like a distant, vague recollection than an actual sense experience. This distilled mood is accentuated by the foreground reflections—a favourite and recurrent theme throughout Economou's career—and an elusive sense of human presence, suggested rather than actually depicted at the balcony door.1. Martigues, the 'Venice of Provence' as it is often called, is a town close to Marseilles that attracted such towering figures of modern art as Derain, Dufy and Braque.