Kneeling Muslims

Symeon Savvidis, an unsettled and enquiring spirit, experimented constantly with new means of expression, supporting in theory views in connection with the processing of the phenomenon of colour, which he always apprehended in relation to the physiology of the human eye, in accepting the complementary correlations of colours. To begin with, he studied architecture at the Athens Polytechnic, but abandoned this after two years to go to study painting at the Academy of Munich, where, in the end, he remained until 1925. He paid a number of visits to Asia Minor, his place of origin. His experiences on these journeys are apparent in his works, which are marked by the style of orientalism, a widespread movement in Europe. In his wide-ranging subject-matter, genre painting scenes, portraits, interiors, and, above all, pictures with an Eastern content are rendered with his modern approach, based on the theories which he was developing, both in the use of colour and in the organisation of the picture's composition.