Nikiphoros Lytras

Nikiforos Lytras (Greek Νικηφόρος Λύτρας; * 1832 in Pyrgos in Tinos, † June 14, 1904 in Athens, also Nikephoros Lytras, Nikiphoros Lytras transcribed ) was one of the greatest Greek painters and professors of painting during the 19th century. He is considered one of the most important representatives of the painting of the so-called Munich school of realism, and one of the first designers of the doctrine of Fine Arts in Greece.

Life

Nikiforos Lytras was the son of a sculptor of folk art. In 1850, at the age of 18 years, he went with his father to Athens, and enrolled at the city's Academy of Fine Arts. There, he studied painting as a student of the Brothers Margaritis, the German Ludwig Thiersch and the Italian Raffaello Ceccoli. After graduating in 1856 he taught at the Athens Academy elementary drawing. In 1860 he went with a scholarship from the Greek government to Munich to deepen at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich his studies. His teacher was Karl von Piloty, the most important representative of the painting of historical realism in Germany.

With the exile of King Otto in 1862, interrupted the Greek government granted him a scholarship. Then took the rich Greek Baron Simon of Sina, Ambassador of Greece in Vienna, the study costs of Lytras.

In the summer of 1865, a few time before his return to Greece, he first met his future friend Nicholas Gysi, who had recently arrived earlier in Munich to also study at the side of Piloty. Together with Gysis they visited in this time art exhibitions, museums and picturesque villages in Bavaria.

After his return to Greece he became a professor at the Athens School of Art. He held the Chair at the Faculty of Higher painting for 38 years. In 1873 he undertook together with Gysis a three-day trip to the Asia Minor Smyrna. A year later, he went back to Munich and returned in April of 1875 back to Athens. In September 1876, he was accompanied by Gysis again to Munich and later to Paris. In 1879 he visited Egypt and in the winter of the same year he married Irene Kyriakides, the daughter of a wealthy merchant from Smyrna. A year later, Antonio, was born the first of their six children. This was followed by the sons Nikolaos, Othon, Pericles and Lysander, and the daughter Chrysauge. The son Nikolaos Lytras was also a painter with a rich and important work.

During his artistic career as a painter and his teaching position at the School of Art, Lytras befell early recognition and fame. When he learned many important painters who later went different artistic ways. Among other Georgios Iakovidis, Périclès Pantazis, Georgios Roilos and Nikolaos Vokos.

In the summer of 1904 Lytras died at the age of 72 after a short illness from poisoning, suspected of, that it was caused by chemical substances in its stains. A few months ago took over his old student Georgios Iakovidis his chair at the university.

Works

During his time as a student of Piloty to Lytras dealt with the so-called historical painting. It works were created with reference to mythology and Greek history. In the fall time in Munich, for example, the works:

• The hanging of patriarch Gregory V.
• Penelope solves her woven on
• Antigone in front of the dead Polynices

With his return to Greece Lytras began to deal with portraits, but also with issues of rural and urban life. Customs and snapshots inspired some of his famous today signs immoral ends works:

• Lament of the fishing
• The milkman
• Child rolls a cigarette
• The expectation

The signs immoral ends works, which he introduced as the first, corresponded to the prevailing zeitgeist of bourgeois society. His travels to Asia Minor and Egypt enriched his paintings with depictions of small negro children of fellahin, Khojas, and other elements of the west popular and mysterious Orient.

The works of his last years are motivated by Altersmelancholie, religious unrest and Todesvorahnungen. Towards the end of his life appeared in his paintings ascetic and black -clad figures, instead of sleek and stylish girl.

Lytras was one of the most popular artists in the Athenian art circles of his time. He participated in many exhibitions and has won numerous awards, as with the Olympien 1859 to 1889, the world exhibitions in Paris in 1855, 1867, 1878 and 1900, the Great Exhibition of Vienna in 1873 and at the regular exhibitions of the Art Association Parnassos. For the first Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 he created the commemorative medals.

As the official portraitist of the high Athenian society, he created full-body portraits of members of important families, as well as the directors of the National Bank of Greece and other important citizens. These portraits are among the most important of Greek painting of the 19th century.

Through his years of teaching at the Art Academy of Athens, he set an important foundation for the development of modern painting in Greece. Although he was arrested as an artist all his life painting of academic realism, unaffected by the currents of Impressionism, he kept his students on to be open to new trends in painting. Thus, he did not only as an artist for the development of Greek painting, but also as a teacher for their development and for decisive impulses. His view on the art is in one of his quotes clearly: " The love of beauty, is the bridge between God and man ."

Honored him in 1903, the Greek government with the Golden Cross of the Redeemer. In 1909, five years after his death, works by Lytras in Munich in the exhibition were to see " The School of Piloty " at Galerie Heinemann. 1933 organized the School of Fine Arts Athens a retrospective with 186 works by the artist.