The Acropolis through a window, 1934
One of the favourite pupils of Georgios Iakovidis, under whom he studied at the School of Fine Arts (1925 - 1932), but also influenced by Nikolaos Lytras, who also taught him, Nikolaos Xenos worked chiefly in landscape, which he rendered in a variety of ways, between impressionism and expressionism. With his particular devotion to the landscape of Attica, he produced various views chiefly of Athens with the Acropolis, at different times of the day, as he studied the differentiations of light.
A typical work of Xenos is The Acropolis through a Window. The Sacred Rock with the Parthenon and the Propylaea stands out against the background, seen from the height of a veranda. In the intermediate plane, a zone of rooftops of houses in Plaka with the dome and bell-tower of a church is shown. At times with precision of design, which is stressed by the clarity of the line, as is the case in the foreground of this work, and at other times with greater freedom and indistinctness, which distances him from descriptive detail, the artist is concerned particularly to convey the atmosphere of the moment, which here, by means of warm lyrical colours, defines the time as evening.