On the Peaks of Olympus
After his studies at the School of Fine Arts, which he continues in Antwerp, Ithakisios worked for many years (1901 - 1922) in Smyrna. At the time of the Asia Minor Disaster, he took refuge in Athens. A short while afterwards, he left the city to settle in a cave on Olympus. He lived there for 20 years, before returning to the Greek capital. A devotee of the Greek countryside, he gained his inspiration from it for a large number of pictures, which entitled him to be described as par excellence a landscape artist. In spite of the fact that the approach which governs his landscape compositions is influenced by the realistic-classicist spirit of his studies, he developed a landscape painting which is marked by the purity of the atmosphere, the strong colours, and the contrasts of light and shadow caused by the Mediterranean sun.