Lot 21: PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR MICHALIS ECONOMOU GREEK, 1888-1933 HOUSE NEAR THE WATER

signed l.l.

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Private Collection, Athens
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

Aphrodite Kouria, M. Economou 1884-1933, Athens, 2001, no. 178, p. 229, illustrated; p. 259 catalogued (with incorrect measurements)
CATALOGUE NOTE

Painted circa 1929-31.

Economou initially went to Paris in 1906 to study architecture, but instead enrolled at the Academie des Beaux-Arts. 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 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 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." (Aphrodite Kouria, Michalis Economou: an individualistic interpreter of Greek landscapes, Zygos, Athens, 1983, p. 44).

35.5 by 24.5cm., 14 by 9 3/4 in.