Kogevinas Lykourgos

At the age of sixteen he departed from Corfu for Rome and a year later Paris. There he studied painting and engraving at the Grande Chaumiere and Julian Academies. In 1908 he returned to Greece to do his military service and the following year took part in the exhibition of the Youth Group at the Zappeion Hall and then returned, via Munich, to Paris. In 1912- 1913 he took part in the Balkan Wars and the Greek government appointed him, along with the painter Nikolaos Androutsos and the sculptor Konstantinos Dimitriadis, a representative to the Conference of Artists in Paris. In 1914, when he had already returned to Paris, he presented his first solo exhibition in Athens at the Parnassos Hall. He made many trips in Greece and in 1918 presented a series of scenes from the front in Northern Epirus. Definitive for his systematic involvement with engraving was his acquaintance with the engraver Andre Dunoyer de Segonzac in 1921. He stayed in Paris until 1933, presenting solo shows and taking part, primarily with paintings, in group exhibitions both in France, where in 1925 he received a gold medal at the Parisian Exhibition of Decorative Arts, and in Greece. The publication of his first album in 1922, with twelve views of the monasteries on Mt. Athos, had a preface by Charles Diehl and by 1939 quite a number of other albums were published by large Parisian publishers. In 1985 the Yakinthos gallery had a retrospective exhibition of his paintings and engravings.

An artist with a wealth of engraving work, he is considered the founder of etching in Greece. He was deeply involved with the landscape, both in his painting and engraving, where he is distinguished for his classicistic point of view, delicacy of line and compositional clarity, bearing witness to a relationship with the idyllic French landscapes of the 18th and 19th century.