Harmony

Nikolaos Gyzis is considered a master of nineteenth-century Greek painting and a towering figure of its so-called School of Munich. As a young child, Gyzis started attending lectures at the National Technical University of Athens, where he officially enrolled in 1854. Nine years later he left for Munich to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1872 he returned to Greece for two years, in the meantime travelling to Asia Minor. Unlike Nikephoros Lytras who settled in Greece, Gyzis returned and remained in Munich until the end of his life, where apart from his impressive career as an artist, he also proved a profound influence on younger artists through his teaching at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. He produced a body of high-quality work of great diversity; from genre scenes – many inspired by Greek customs and everyday life – to portraits and still life paintings where the realistic depiction does not rule out idealistic treatment. He regularly showed at the Glaspalast exhibitions, received the bronze medal at the Paris World Fair of 1878, and became an honorary member of the Munich Academy in 1880.

 His allegories and large-scale religious visions established him as the herald of a new spirit, the precursor of Jugendstil, to which his involvement with the art poster belongs. Harmony dates from this later period. Painted two years before his last trip to his homeland, it was produced in the context of an art competition organised to mark the centenary of the German piano manufacturers Rud. Ibach Sohn, in 1894. Gyzis, who was proclaimed the winner with Harmony, had also painted this work as a unique approach to the subject.