Lot 17: Michalis Economou (Greek, 1888-1933) Mega Spileo 50 x 60 cm.

Michalis Economou (Greek, 1888-1933)
Mega Spileo signed 'M. Economou' (lower right)oil on canvas50 x 60 cm.

Provenance: Private collection, Athens.Literature: A. Kouria, M. Economou, Adam editions, Athens 2001, no. 93, p. 256 (catalogued), p. 141 (illustrated).Built along a precipitous cliff at the mouth of the Chelmos Cave in northern Peloponnese in 362 AD by Theodoros and Symeon, two monks from Thessaloniki, historic Mega Spileo, the Great Cave Monastery, is reputedly the oldest in Greece and one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Orthodox Christians. Dedicated to the Assumption, the cloister was once among the richest in the Greek world, owning properties in Macedonia, Constantinople and Asia Minor, and housing important Byzantine manuscripts and relics. It was fortified during the Greek War of Independence and though it was repeatedly attacked it never fell into enemy hands. Following a devastating fire, it was rebuilt in 1937, while new buildings were added in the postwar period.Economou's Mega Spileo amply demonstrates the artist's interpretative approach to the natural and man-made environments. Handled with an abstract expressive vocabulary, the imposing landmark and the craggy, overhanging cliffs, with their stylised shapes and undulating, curvilinear forms, become a screen on which the artist projects his inner world. Likewise, the three vertical1 cypresses in the foreground, with their slender, sinuous lines and flowing, delicate forms seem to have lost their earthly substance, generating a sense of spiritual and moral uplift that recalls Parthenis' beloved cypresses. Infused with ethereal light and a hazy, dreamlike atmosphere, and revealing a magnificent vagueness and poetic uncertainty of space, the entire canvas is transformed into a subjective image charged with symbolic, almost metaphysical import, perfectly matching the religious subject. 1 The vertical is a quintessentially idealistic line symbolising faith and uplift towards the heavens.