Nikolaos Gyzis

Nikolaos Gyzis (1842–1901) was a Greek painter widely regarded as the most important Greek artist of the nineteenth century and a leading representative of the Munich School (a generation of Greek painters trained at the Munich Academy). Active mostly in Munich, where he taught at the Academy and exhibited at the Glaspalast, Gyzis produced genre scenes of Greek folk life, Orientalist subjects, allegories, and ambitious religious-symbolic compositions.

Gyzis painted in a polished Munich academic manner with warm earth tones, careful drawing, and sensitive observation of Greek folk costume and ritual. His later allegorical works show a Symbolist tendency.

Gyzis is the central figure of the Greek Munich School and produced the foundational images of nineteenth-century Greek folk and national identity in painting.