Michalis Economou

Michalis Economou was born in Piraeus in 1884. He attended the Dragatsis Educational Institute. While still in school, he took private lessons with the painter Konstantinos Volanakis. In 1906 he went to Paris to study shipbuilding at the École des Mines but abandoned those studies to devote himself to painting. He attended classes at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1913 he held his first solo exhibition at Galerie Marcel Bernheim. He traveled across France, painting various regions and cities, and developed a special attachment to Martigues, the “Venice of Provence.” In 1926 the Parnassos Literary Society hosted his first solo exhibition in Greece. In 1927 he held a second solo show at Parnassos, with landscapes of Attica and Poros. In the following years he exhibited at the Stratigopoulou Gallery (1928), the Piraeus Municipal Theatre (1929), the Hellenic Touring and Automobile Club (ELPA), and the Union of Journalists (1931). Clearly influenced by Symbolism and Post-Impressionism, he devoted himself exclusively to landscape, depicting humble cottages, seascapes, the Acropolis, Hydra, Plaka, and the Aegean. He died of syphilis in Athens in 1933.