Drawing for the “Landscape of Piraeus with a statue”

Nikos Engonopoulos was born in 1907 in Athens. A key representative of the surrealist spirit in Greece, he initially studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts under the tutelage of K. Parthenis and then studied in Munich, Florence, Rome, Ravenna and visited several European countries. He worked in higher education for many years and in 1967 he was appointed professor at the Free Design Chair of the NTUA, where he taught until 1973. A painter of the so-called "Generation of the 1930s", he sought to approach and fertilize with contemporary perspectives the timeless cultural heritage of Greece, choosing as a channel of expression the surrealist approach, which allows editorial freedom, cultivates the absurd and the accidental and gives a dreamy, lyrical atmosphere to the overall composition. A key exponent of surrealism in poetry as well, he published: Keychains of Silence (1938), Don't Speak to the Driver (1939), Seven Poems and Bolívar (1944), In the Valley of the Rose (1978), etc. His works were translated into French, English and Italian. He exhibited his work in eight solo exhibitions in Athens, and in 1983 the National Gallery organized a major retrospective of his work. He participated in group exhibitions and international events (Venice Biennale (1954), where he officially represented Greece, Sao Paulo (1955), etc.). He was a member of the Armos group. Furthermore, he lectured and published essays on art, illustrations, etc. He was awarded the First Poetry Prize of the Ministry of Education (1958) and the Golden Cross of George I (1966).