Thalia Flora-Karavia

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Thalia Flora-Karavia made drawings during the Balkan War of 1912/13

Thalia Flora-Karavia , Greek Θάλεια Φλωρά-Καραβία , (* 1871 in Siatista ; † January 17, 1960 in Athens ) was a Greek artist who was best known for her war drawings .

Life

Thalia Flora was born in West Macedonia , Greece in 1871 . In 1874 her family moved to Istanbul . Flora attended school here and then studied from 1883 to 1888 at the Zappeion girls' school. After graduating, she worked as a teacher for a year, but soon decided to study art and went to Munich in 1895. Since she was not allowed to attend the Munich Academy of Arts as a woman, she took lessons in the teaching ateliers of Georgios Jakobides and Nikolaos Gyzis . In 1898 she returned to Istanbul, but came back to Munich in 1900 and then traveled through Europe. In 1903 she lived in Paris, where she came into contact with the Impressionists, whose style she adopted. In 1906 she took part in an exhibition in Athens with Sophia Laskaridou .

During a stay in Egypt in 1907 she married the journalist Nicholas Karavia. The newly wed couple lived in Alexandria for the next 30 years . Flora-Karavia founded an art school there and also taught. During the Balkan Wars of 1912/13, she decided to move with the Greek troops to work as a correspondent for the newspaper in Alexandria, which her husband ran. More than 300 drawings were created that document the life of the troops and the refugees, but also show the victims. The work was published in 1936 in the book Impressions of the War 1912/13 in Macedonia and Epirus . She also took part in the Greco-Turkish War in 1921 and was at the front in Albania in the 1940/41 Greco-Italian War .

In 1940 Flora-Karavia moved to Greece where she spent the rest of her life. She died in Athens in 1960.

plant

Thalia Flora first exhibited her work in 1898. Numerous exhibitions followed, including the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 , exhibitions in Istanbul in 1901 and 1902, in Athens in 1903, in Cairo in 1909, in Rome in 1911 and at the Biennale di Venezia in 1934.

Thalia Flora-Karavia painted and drew portraits, landscapes and still lifes, painted genre pictures and illustrated books. While the paintings were initially strictly academic, after a stay in Paris in 1903 they adopted more and more stylistic features of the Impressionists.

The Athens War Museum has a large collection of watercolors and pastels by Flora-Karavia from the time of the Balkan Wars and the Greco-Turkish War. The drawings show scenes from the Battle of Bizhani in February 1913, an improvised hospital in Philippiada, portraits of soldiers and King Constantine I and his staff.

More than 2500 works have been preserved by the artist. Approx. 70 war drawings were bought by the artist in 1957 and given to the Municipal Gallery of Ioannina.

Awards

  • 1945 Silver Medal from the Athens Academy of Fine Arts
  • 1954 Archangel Cross of the Order of Charity

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Flora Karavia Thaleia , Nationalgalerie , accessed on March 28, 2019
  2. ↑ a b c Thalia Flora-Karavia . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 41, Saur, Munich a. a. 2004, ISBN 3-598-22781-7 , p. 299.
  3. ↑ a b Συλλογή Σχεδίων Θάλειας-Φλωρά Καραβία Municipal Gallery Ioannina, accessed on March 28, 2019 (Greek)
  4. ↑ Michael Llewellyn Smith: Athens: A Cultural and Literary History . Signal Books, 2004, p. 231 ( digitized from Google Books )
personal data
SURNAME Flora-Karavia, Thalia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Flora-Karavia, Thaleia; Flora-Caravias, Thalia; Phlora-Karabia, Thaleia; Flora-Karawia, Thaleia; Caravia, Thalia Flora; Caravias, Thalia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Siatista
DATE OF DEATH 17th January 1960
Place of death Athens