Τοπίο με δέντρο

000119 Artemis Melissarato, Landscape with tree, n.d., oil on cardboard, 35 × 28 cm

Having studied painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts (graduated in 1940) under Konstantinos Parthenis and at the École Supérieure des Arts et Publicité in Paris (graduated in 1951), Artemis Melissarato was one of the most understated but charming artists of the post-war years. She retains from Parthenis's teaching a love of the grandeur of nature and a pantheistic conception that links her to the 19th-century Romantics. In her paintings she focuses on landscape painting. This painting depicts a humble view of the countryside: a bare field on the first level, with two small trees rising on the left, dominating between the zone of land and the cloudy sky. The drawing is clearly expressionistic, as is the use of colour, although Melissarato's colour scale does not reject realism. The result is a fast executed picture, with rough surface, strong brushstrokes, and an emotional intensity that runs throughout the painting to reach the viewer's sentiment. A landscape with no roots to picturesque or the charming landscapes of the impressionists is transformed into a painterly event, a composition that stimulates the emotion not by the subject depicted but by the style of execution.