Description
Theofrastos Triantafyllidis (1881-1955) – Painting “Lake of Ioannina” oil on canvas. Dimensions: 50.0 X 69.0 cm.
It has time wear, oil crackling and has been put on another canvas.
Biography:
Theophrastos Triantafyllidis (Smyrni, 1881 – Athens, 1955) was a pioneer, but unknown to the general public, Greek painter of the first half of the 20th century.
Triantafyllidis was born in Smyrna in 1881. His father was a well-to-do raisin merchant and this fact allowed the painter to engage in his art without financial restrictions in the first years of his artistic career.
From 1900 to 1907, Triantafyllidis studied painting at the School of Fine Arts (later the Academy of Fine Arts) in Athens. Then, at the urging of his teacher G. Iakovidis, he continued his studies in Munich in the laboratory of Ludwig von Lofts. In 1910 he left Munich to continue his studies in Paris in the laboratory of Desire-Lucas. The painter’s short stay in Paris was decisive for his later artistic career. Even before he returned to Greece, he decided to leave academia for good and turn to the modern currents of his time.
In 1912 he enlisted in the Greek Army and took part in the Balkan Wars. In 1913 he settled in Athens and started painting in the same workshop as K. Maleas on Tsakalov street. Together with the latter, Nikolaos Lytra et al., he was one of the founders of the “Tekhni” Group, which brought about a significant break in the visual affairs of Greece with its first exhibition in 1917. He was also a close friend of the painter Pericles Byzantios , with whom he had been associated since his years in Paris.
The Asia Minor Disaster in 1922 marked the end of economic comfort and the beginning of many hardships for Triantafyllidis. The painter lost forever the support of his father’s property and was forced to live only from the income of his work, which was very difficult in the Athens of that time. However, he rejected his brother’s proposal to settle permanently in Paris.
After the loss of his father’s property in Smyrna, he settled in an attic on Aiolou street. In 1928 he got married in Athens, but his wife, Aristea, suffered total paralysis immediately after the wedding. In order to cope with his wife’s medical expenses, he was forced to sell his house and live, together with his paralyzed wife, in one room. In a flood of Kifissos, in the interwar years, his workshop in Patisia was destroyed and together with the workshop most of his works were destroyed. Ten years after his marriage, his wife died and he moved to a small house on Kondou Street in Agios Loukas. During the Occupation, he managed to survive by giving painting lessons and selling at humiliating prices what works he had left.
He was a man of austerity and small joys; that’s why he was called “Papadiamantis of painting”. He loved fishing, life and work in his workshop, warm contact with fellow man.
In 1954 his health was seriously shaken. He died penniless the following year at the “Blue Cross” clinic and his body was buried in Menidi. The day after his death, some of his friends, among them Pericles Byzantius, registered the artist’s small legacy: 37 paintings in all. Many decades later, the art historian A. Kotidis identified and studied about 200 works of the painter scattered in various collections.
Theofrastos Triantafyllidis (1881-1955) – Painting “Lake of Ioannina” – A very beautiful and collectible painting.
Code: E736
