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Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
DEMETRIOS GALANIS L'Enfant au cheval mécanique.
Oil on canvas, 1914-1919. 1003x803mm; 39 1/2x31 5/8 inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto.
Provenance: Collection Seignitz; private collection, New York.
Exhibited: "Salon d'Automne," Grand Palais, Paris, November 1-December 9, 1919, number 2094 (illustrated); "Exposition D. Galanis," Galerie La Licorne, Paris, March 3-18, 1922, number 3.
Published: Rene-Jean, "La Peinture au Salon d'Automne," Comoedia, November 3, 1919, page 1-2 (illustrated); Les Lettres parisiennes, January 1, 1920; Gabory, "Galanis et son ouevre," Les peintre Français nouveaux, Librairie Gallimard, no. 25, 1926, page 10-11, 17 (illustrated); L'Art d'Aujourd'hui, Éditions Albert Morancé, Summer 1925, number 6, plate 27 (illustrated); Tassos, "A Stroll with Galanis," Zygos, no. V-66, May 1966, reprinted in Zygos, no. 39, January-February 1980, page 39.
Galanis (1879-1966) was a Greek painter, printmaker and contemporary of artists like Picasso, Braque and Matisse, who had frequently visited Galanis at his home and studio in Montmartre. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts before settling in Paris and attending the École des Beaux-Arts. He achieved notable success during his time in Paris and was appointed a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1945.
L'Enfant au cheval mécanique is a portrait of Galanis's son as a child, on which he based an etching of the same title circa 1919-21. Gabory notes that although Galanis started this exemplary painting, "le tableau de Galanis le plus significatif, sa meilleure expression," in 1914, it was not completed until 1919 due to the artist enlisting in the French military during World War I (therefore becoming a naturalized French citizen). This painting is evidence of the profound impact that the work of Cézanne and Cubism had on Galanis's paintings.
Galanis's son, Jean-Sebastian was born in Paris on April 13, 1910 to Galanis and his wife, Stéphanie-Julie Bouvier from Provence. Stéphanie-Julie and Jean-Sebastian feature prominently among Galanis's subjects, the most notable of which is the 1920-21 oil on canvas The Painter's Family, now in a private collection. Jean-Sebastian fought in the Free French Naval Forces during World War II and perished on the freighter Lisieux on November 27, 1940 off the coast of Newfoundland. Galanis mourned his son for the rest of his life, keeping a portrait of him in his studio into the 1960s.
