Michalis Economou

FOOTNOTES

• Provenance
  Private collection, Athens.

  Literature
  A. Kouria, M. Economou, Adam editions, Athens 2001, no. 88, p. 255 (catalogued), p. 139 (illustrated).

  A painting of vibrating pulse and melodic rhythm suspended between real time and memory, Lycabettus amply demonstrates Economou’s interpretative approach to nature. Handled with an abstractive expressive vocabulary, the imposing Athenian landmark and the dense hillside foliage, with their stylised shapes, sinuous lines and undulating, curvilinear forms, become a screen on which the artist projects his inner world. Infused with ethereal light and a dreamlike atmosphere, reality is transformed into a subjective image charged with symbolic, almost metaphysical import.

  Lycabettus most probably dates after 1926, the year the artist returned to Greece from France, and was probably completed in 1927, when he had his second one-man show in Athens featuring mostly Greek landscapes from Attica, the isle of Poros and elsewhere. As noted by A. Kouria who prepared the artist’s monograph, “this output can be considered the most personal expression of Economou’s art. The landscape, no longer just a pictorial space, becomes an expressive-symbolic field recording the artist’s emotional and intellectual response to the stimuli offered by the natural environment. In some paintings, the trees (pines and cypresses) seem to have lost their weight, becoming insubstantial and vulnerable. A latent energy, a secret, surreptitious life force enlivens these paintings.”¹

  In 1927, D. Kokkinos noted that the latest works by Economou were true works of poetry,² while art critics of the time urged collectors to hasten and purchase them. In light of the critical and popular acclaim his Athens one-man shows met with, it’s no wonder that his works were acquired by such major early 20th century Greek collectors as C. Loulis, G. Stringos and A. Benakis.³

  ¹. A. Kouria, Michalis Economou [in Greek], Adam ed., Athens 2001, pp. 106-116.
  ². Elliniki daily, December 4, 1927.
  ³. Kouria, p. 125.