Tinian Personalities
An island with a rich cultural heritage, Tinos is the birthplace of many renowned artists who made great contributions to modern Greek culture.
Yannoulis Chalepas
Born in 1851 in the village of Pyrgos, Yannoulis Chalepas is perhaps the most famous personality from Tinos and one of the most notable sculptors in modern Greece. The son of a famous Tinian marble sculptor, Yannoulis showed his talent in marble sculpture from a very young age. He studied the craft in the Athens School of Arts, being taught by famed sculptor Leonidas Drosis. After graduation, he moved to Munich with a scholarship, being taught by Neoclassical sculptor Max von Widnmann.
In 1875, Yannoulis returned to Athens, where he established his own workshop. The following year, he started working on his famous sculpture piece The Sleeping Maiden, which was made to embellish the grave of Sofia Afentaki, a young girl who died from tuberculosis at the age of eighteen. The marvelous sculpture can still be seen proudly displayed in the First Cemetery of Athens.
In the winter of 1878, Chalepas suffered a nervous breakdown, destroying some of his works and attempting suicide several times. His condition would only worsen and, from 1888 to 1902, he would be committed to the Mental Hospital of Corfu. He then moved back to Tinos under his mother’s supervision and would finally start sculpting again in 1916. He would go on to create many more works of art until he died in 1938. A collection of his works as well as his personal belongings can be seen in the Chalepas Museum in Pyrgos, housed in the artist’s ancestral home.
Lazaros Sochos
Born in 1862 in the settlement of Isternia, Lazaros Sochos is another significant Greek sculptor. His family moved to Constantinople when he was still very young, and it was there that he first started working on marble sculpting. He also studied at the drawing school of famed French artist Antoine Guillement. As a teenager, he moved back to Greece, where he studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts under the tutelage of many notable professors, including Nikiforos Lytras.
Lazaros then went to Paris, where he enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and worked with sculptor Marius Jean Antonin Mercie. After graduating, he opened up a sculpting workshop where he would invite artists from all over Europe. In 1897, he fought in the Greek-Turkish War in a volunteer corps. He would officially return to Greece in 1901 to erect the statue of Theodoros Kolokotronis in Nafplion, which he had begun working on at Mercie’s workshop. In 1908, he was appointed professor of sculpting at the Athens School of Arts where he would teach until he died in 1911.
Nikiforos Lytras
Nikiforos Lytras, an important 19th-century Greek painter, was born in Pyrgos in 1832. He was the son of a marble sculptor and went on to study painting at the Athens School of Arts at the age of eighteen. In 1860 he received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich where he met Nikolaos Gyzis. After returning to Athens, he became a professor at the School of Fine Arts, where he would apply his innovative teaching skills and share his independent ideas in painting.
Nikiforos’s works focused on village and city life, reflecting his love for the traditional Greek ways of living and the simplicity of the Greek household. For 38 years, Lytras maintained his position as a professor, successfully transmitting his love and artistic character to a series of famous artists, such as Georgios Iakovidis, Polychronis Lebesis, and Nikolaos Vokos. He continued to teach painting until he died in 1904. His son Nikolaos followed in his father’s artistic footsteps, studying at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and heading the Athens School of Arts.
Nikolaos Gyzis
Nikolaos Gyzis was one of the most renowned and influential Greek painters of the 19th century. He was born in Skalvochorio of Tinos in 1842 and was the son of a skillful woodworker. From the young age of 8 years old, Nikolaos would display artistic inclinations, creating many charcoal sketches, some of which are preserved in the Museum of Tinian Artists in Pyrgos. In 1850, his family moved to Athens, where he would go on to study at the School of Fine Arts. After graduating, he continued his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he met Nikiforos Lytras.
In 1872, he returned to Athens, transforming his house into a workshop. There, he produced a sequence of remarkable paintings, including the Carnival at Athens and the Arravoniasmata (Ceremonial and Engagement), which are among his most popular works. His art often dealt with German and Greek themes, the latter being accompanied by a brighter and more diverse color spectrum. A few of his paintings are inspired by Greek history, the Ottoman era, and the War of Independence.
From 1886 onwards, he was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, his students including Ernst Oppler and Fritz Osswald. Gyzis was deeply religious and showed a great interest in metaphysics, a theme prevalent in his last paintings. In 1895, he visited Greece for the last time and died in Munich in 1901, after a long fight with leukemia. His works on painting, copper, and wood engraving earned him many awards during his lifetime. Today, they are exhibited in museums and private collections worldwide, including some in Greece and Germany.
