Michelas, c.1939

Andreas Georgiadis the Cretan, an uncommitted figure in Greek painting, shaped his own purely individual style which was based on his profound belief in the values of the great painting of Western Europe. In Paris, to begin with, where he continued his studies with a scholarship after his graduation from the School of Fine Arts in 1923, and in Rome later, he discovered the great teachers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, who answered fully to his aesthetic ideals. In order to understand them, he studied ceaselessly in museums, copying their works systematically. He particularly regarded with awe and admiration the work of his great compatriot Domenikos Theotokopoulos, who influenced him profoundly. With rare exceptions, his painting centres on man. He concerned himself particularly with portraiture, which he executed with features which range between realism - which is expressed by striking alternations of bright and dark surfaces and colour contrasts - and a heroic idealism - which gives to the individuals whom he depicts a dramatic grandeur. Turning his back on the modern movements in art, he advanced by his own experimentations, which gradually led him to lighten his colours and his style to lose its austere manner. A great master of painting, he daringly altered the expression of his subject, without distortion of the face or impairment of the features, in order to give a better rendering of the personality.