15 Facts About Nikolaos Dragoumis

Nikolaos Dragoumis was a Greek painter and the firstborn son of Stephanos Dragoumis and Elizabeth Kontogiannakis.

Nikolaos Dragoumis has been described by Dimitris Pikionis as "the van Gogh of Greece" because he was an exceptional post-Impressionist, and one of the forerunners of Post-Impressionism in Greece.

Nikolaos Dragoumis was born on 29 August 1874 in Athens, where he spent his childhood.

In November 1897, Nikos Dragoumis obtained his degree from the University of Sorbonne and returned to Greece to pursue a career in the Foreign Ministry.

Nikolaos Dragoumis was enrolled in the Julian Free Academy in October 1900 and studied there until December 1902 in the workshop of William Bouguereau.

In June 1903 Nikolaos Dragoumis went to the village of Graveson for the first time in Provence, where he spent a long period of his life painting.

Nikolaos Dragoumis returned to Paris in June 1905, although he remained in Graveson.

Nikolaos Dragoumis was again found in Greece from October 1909 until July 1910 before returning to Paris.

Nikolaos Dragoumis stayed there for 18 years until 1932, when his family brought him back to Greece due to financial difficulties.

Nikolaos Dragoumis entered the Dromokaitio Institute in Chaidari in August, where he died a few months later, on 6 January 1933, possibly from a stroke.

Since Nikolaos Dragoumis himself burned several of his paintings in 1911, with the onset of his mental illness, today the family archive preserves basically lightweight designs on paper.

Nikolaos Dragoumis, who did not systematically study painting, was nurtured as a painter in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, at a time when Impressionism and post-Impressionist movements dominated French art, while in the Salons of the avant-garde the cubists were presented for the first time.

Nikolaos Dragoumis was rather indifferent to Modernism and the experiments of Matisse, Braque and Picasso, focusing his attention essentially on the Nabian circle and more broadly on Symbolism.

Nikolaos Dragoumis was greatly influenced by Van Gogh's painting, both thematically and stylistically, and secondarily by Gauguin and the Pont Aven School.

Similar observations can be made at the level of style: Nikolaos Dragoumis is not part of Impressionism but rather of post-Impressionist quests.