Konstantinos Parthenis (

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

: Κωνσταντίνος Παρθένης; 10 May 1878 – 25 July 1967) was a distinguished

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painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

, born in

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ...

. Parthenis broke with the Greek academic tradition of the 19th century and introduced modern elements together with

traditional A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...

themes, like the figure of

Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, names and titles), was ...

, in his

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

Life

Konstantinos Parthenis was born to an Italian mother and a Greek-Egyptian father in Alexandria. After a brief period of study in Italy, he studied from 1895 to 1903 at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under

Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach Karl may refer to: People * Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name * Karl der Große, commonly known in English as Charlemagne * Karl Marx, German philosopher and political writer * Karl of Austria, last Austria ...

. Parthenis belonged to the artistic group "Humanitas" that was founded in 1897 by Diefenbach on the "Himmelhof" in Ober Sankt Veit, and became the nucleus of the early alternative movement or life reform. Parthenis also took music lessons at the same time at the Vienna Conservatory. His first solo exhibition was in Boehm Künstlerhaus in 1899. After his studies in Vienna, he moved to Paris in 1903, and then he lived in Greece, where he worked as an icon painter. In 1907, he painted out the George's Church in Vienna. he was active as an icon painter of deep religiosity but also characterized by a fraction to traditional icon painting. After his participation in the Venice Biennale in 1938, the Italian government acquired one of his works.

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A text by Chr. Christou

1878 births 1967 deaths People from Alexandria Egyptian people of Greek descent 20th-century Greek painters {{Greece-painter-stub