MICHALIS ECONOMOU (1888-1933) Chapelle avec des cyprès

MICHALIS ECONOMOU (1888-1933)
Chapelle avec des cyprès
signé "M.Economou" en bas à gauche
huile sur flanelle
61 x 50cm (24 x 19 11/16in).
Peint c. 1927.

signed "M.Economou" lower left
oil on flannel laid on canvas
Provenance
Private collection, Athens.

Littérature
A.Kouria, Michalis Economou, Adam editions, Athens 2001, no. 115, pp. 256-257 (catalogued), p. 165 (illustrated).

Evocative flames of dark green flare from the earth against an animated sky, echoing Van Gogh's famous cypresses.¹ This mesmerizing work probably dates after 1926, the year Economou returned to Greece from France, and was most probably completed in 1927, when he had his second personal exhibition in Athens. Reviewing the show, critic D. Kokkinos noted that the exhibits were "true works of poetry, but so masterfully rendered that their significance as paintings prevailed."² Critics of the time stressed the museum quality of these works and urged art lovers to hasten and purchase them. In light of such critical and popular acclaim, it's no wonder that Economou's works adorned the collections of major early 20th century Greek collectors, such as C. Loulis, G. Stringos and A. Benakis.³

In this evocative rendition infused with an ethereal light and a hazy, dreamlike atmosphere, nature becomes a landscape of the artist's inner world, while reality is transformed into an image of subjective truth. As noted by art historian A. Kouria, who prepared the artist's monograph, "an ambivalent sense of presence/absence suffuses these silent images, suspended between real time and memory... In some paintings, the pines and cypresses seem to have lost their weight, becoming insubstantial and vulnerable, with slender, sinuous lines as trunks."⁴ "The cypress tree, a favourite motif of Symbolist painting charged with Romantic overtones, appears in Economou's art as a symbol of his inner self and his strongly subjective response to external world stimuli; it becomes a vehicle of the feeling he wishes to communicate through his art."⁵

¹. Compare V. Van Gogh, Road with cypresses, 1890, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. Van Gogh was fascinated by cypresses as natural equivalents of architectural forms. He admired their inherently expressive character, stressed their spiritual significance and compared their colour to a musical note.
². Elliniki newspaper, December 4, 1927. See also A. Kouria, Michalis Economou [in Greek], Adam editions, Athens 2001, p. 125.
³. See Kouria, Michalis Economou, p. 125.
⁴. Ibid, pp. 108-113.
⁵. Michalis Economou, The Alchemy of Painting, exhibition catalogue, E. Averoff Museum of Modern Greek Art, Metsovo - Evangelos Averoff-Tossizza Foundation, 2023, p. 155.