In 1923 he settled with his family in Greece and from 1928 to 1936 he studied at the School of Fine Arts under Konstantinos Parthenis.
In 1936 he became a member of the group Free Artists, having already begun to exhibit the previous year. He presented his work in solo, group and international exhibitions, among which were the International Exhibition of Cairo in 1947, the Alexandria Biennale of 1963, and the International Engraving Exhibition of Leipzig the same year. In 1977 there was a retrospective of his work at the National Gallery.

During the German occupation he painted a series of compositions whose themes were hunger and the struggles of the people of Athens, while in 1944 he went up to the Eurytania mountains painting scenes from the life and armed resistance of the guerrillas, which were later transferred to full-sized paintings. After the war he became involved with engraving, indeed even inventing his own technique for the oxidation of zinc and copper.

Cultivating a type of expressionistic socialist realism, he depicted in the main the lives of workers, farmers, fishermen and mountain people. On a more limited scale, he was also involved with portraiture and landscape, particularly that of Rhodes, where he lived for many years and where he decorated with wall paintings the conference hall of the Chamber, as well as houses and various foundations.

Son of a florist, originally coming from Mani, Peloponnese, Michael Lekakis took drawing lessons while working at his father’s business. From the late 1920’s, he began working regularly in painting and sculpture. He attended open courses in history, history of art, literature, philosophy, music and anthropology at American universities and associated with American intellectuals and artists. He travelled to Mexico, the Yucatan, Europe and above all Greece, while maintaining his intimate ties with the New York Greek American community.

In 1941, he had his first solo exhibition at the Artists Gallery, New York. Then followed many solo shows, among them in the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1973) and the National Gallery, Athens (1980). Retrospective exhibitions of his work were organised in 1968 at the Dayton Art Institute and in 1987 at the Kouros Gallery, New York. He also participated in major group events, including the Whitney Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Self-taught, but with wide-ranging interests, Michalis Lekakis was an artist who from an early age pursued his own creative course. He began with making realistic heads of his family but soon moved on to abstract sculpture. Working mainly on wood and taking advantage of the unpredictable nature of the material, he created works within the organic abstraction context. According to the specific elements they feature, his works have been distinguished in “columns”, linear and spherical forms, freely deployed in space or interlaced in various combinations, the outcome of merging biomorphs or geometric forms, evoking an effect of movement and growth. Their pedestals play a vital role in these works, as the artist considers them intimately related with the sculptures themselves and produces them in the same manner and material.

Besides sculpture, he also became involved with painting, drawing his subjects from mythology and tradition, and creating works of a symbolic character and a soft colour palette.

He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (1903-1908), painting and sculpture under Nikiforos Lytras, Georgios Roilos and Georgios Vroutos. He went on to study in Paris, first at the Academie Julian, under Raoul Verlet and Paul Maximilien Landowski, and then at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, at Jules-Felix Coutan’s workshop. In 1911, he returned to Athens and opened a studio with Nikolaos Lytras.

His exhibition activity includes group exhibitions, notably ones by the Greek Artists Association and the “Omas Techni” (Art Group) and National Art Fairs, while in 1934 he participated in the Venice Biennale.

In his work, which includes a large number of war memorials, busts, reliefs and free compositions, he combined his academic training with elements of Rodin’s sculpture, both in the dramatisation of the content, especially in war memorials, and in the fluid, impressionistic treatment; while some of his works stand out for their ornamental grace.

He first studied sculpture with Leonidas Drossis at the School of Arts (1876-1883) while also working at Dimitrios Filippotis’s workshop, and then with Antonio Allegretti and Girolamo Masini at the Rome Institute of Fine Arts; he also maintained his own workshop. In 1888, he settled in Athens, where he soon established a workshop, employing several assistants. In 1911, he was appointed professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts but immediately resigned because of disagreements with his colleagues and the Ministry of Education.

He presented his work in group exhibitions in Greece and other countries, including the Olympia in Athens (1888), Paris International Exhibition (1889) and Panhellenic exhibitions (1938 and 1939).

Georgios Bonanos lived during a period of transition for Modern Greek sculpture, when neoclassicist ideas survived in parallel with a trend towards realistic treatment. He employed the teachings of ancient Greek sculpture, which he considered his great model, as much as those of 19th-century neoclassicist masters, with whom he had become familiar during his studies in Rome; at the same time, he introduced a realistic style more evident in his choice of subject and less in treatment. Boasting of a broad range of subjects, he made a great number of statues, busts, funerary monuments and heroa, copies after ancient works, and non-commissioned works of free inspiration, characterized by their monumental qualities, harmony, measure, balance and assurance in composition.

His first contact with sculpture was in the workshop of his father, who was a marble sculptor. In 1903, he enrolled in the School of Arts, where he studied sculpture with Georgios Vroutos and for a short while with Lazaros Sochos. He also attended the drawing courses of Dimitrios Geraniotis, Alexandros Kalloudis and Georgios Iakovidis, while at the same time he worked at N.M. Perakis’s marble sculpture workshop. Graduating from the Athens School of Arts in 1909, he established his own studio in Athens a year later. In 1914, on scholarship from the Georgios Averoff Estate, he went to Paris, where he studied at the Academie Julian with Henri Bouchard and Paul Landowski. After his return in 1919, he was appointed visiting professor at the Department of Plastic, School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens. He travelled, among other places to Olympia, where he studied the Zeus temple sculptures, and Paris. In 1925, he visited Paris for the fourth time and stayed until 1928. During this sojourn in the French capital he had a busy exhibition agenda and was also especially creative, as he first came into contact with the avant-garde. During 1933-1934, he published “20ός Αιώνας” [20th Century], the first magazine focusing on the visual arts in Greece. In 1938, he was appointed regular professor at the 2nd Workshop of Sculpture of the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he taught until 1960 and was director from 1957 to 1959. In 1967, the Academy of Athens awarded him the Excellence of Arts and the following year elected him a member.

His work was presented in Greece and international solo and major group exhibitions, among them exhibitions with the “Omada Techni” [Art Group], the Salon des Artistes Francais, the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon des Independants in Paris, the 1937 Paris International Exhibition, the Biennale of Venice in 1934, 1938 and 1956, and the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1955. In 1959, a retrospective exhibition of his work was mounted at the American Information Service premises and at the Hellenic American Union in 1972.

Michalis Tombros had a major contribution to Modern Greek sculpture. Through the publication of “20th Century” and a wealth of articles in the daily and periodical press as well as his teaching activity at the School of Fine Arts, he helped disseminate avant-garde movements in Greece. His creative career was characterized by a remarkable dualism. While always remaining anthropocentric, he created free works, particularly of female figures, mainly reflecting Aristide Maillol’s plastic style, and commissioned works, in which he generally adopted an approved academic style. On the other hand, his desire to join the avant-garde movements led him to all kinds of experimentations. Thus, he created works in an abstract vein, with Cubist and Surrealist influences, focusing on animal and vegetable forms as well as creatures of his imagination or strange forms.

The descendant of a great family of sculptors, he initially worked as an apprentice to his father, who was a traditional architect mason. In 1858, he was admitted to the School of Arts and graduated in 1862. His professors were first Christian Siegel (1808-1883) and then Georgios Fytalis, in whose family workshop Filippotis learned marble carving while studying at the School of Arts. In 1864, having received a scholarship from the Holy Evangelistria Foundation in Tinos, he left for Rome. He studied there until 1870, first with Emil Wolff and later with Karl Voss. In 1865, he became one of the founding members of the Society of Artists in Rome, whose main objective was to help Greek students to produce their works. Returning to Greece in 1870, he settled in Athens, where he established a studio. In 1908, he received the Saviour’s Cross and in 1915 the Medal of Arts and Letters.

His work has been shown in group exhibitions in Greece and other countries, including the Olympia exhibition in 1875, art exhibitions in the Parnassos Hall and the offices of the Dilettanti Society in Athens, and the 1878 Paris International Exhibition; in 1870, he won first prize in the arts competition of the Academy of Rome.

A prolific artist, he was called “marmarophagus” – marble-eater – by his contemporaries. His oeuvre comprises funerary monuments, busts, mythological and genre works. His education was academic, and academic art prevailed when he returned to Greece, in 1870. However, Filippotis marks a decisive departure into realistic paths, as is evident both in his selection of subject matter and the style of his works. He never abandoned neoclassicist forms, though. Classical statuary, of which he had a deep knowledge, was his model, together with the reality surrounding him, of which he was an acute observer. From classical art he preserved the faultless technical processing of marble and the nudity of bodies; for his own compositions he sought the harmony that illuminates classical art. Yet, he came a step closer to realism, capturing inner reality and movement, with a predominantly naturalistic treatment of certain details that adds a touch of life in his works.