Back to Members

Nikos Engonopoulos
(1907 — 1985)

Nikos Engonopoulos was a Modern Greek painter. Also poet, Engonopoulos is remembered as one of the most important member of “Generation of the ‘30s”. Born in Athens, Engonopoulos began his artistic training at the lycee in Paris in 1923 where he studied for four years. Engonopoulos returned to Greece and joined the army and later worked as a translator in a bank. By 1930 Engonopoulos was employed as a designer in the Urban Planning Department of the Greek Ministry of Public Works. He returned to his artistic training at the Athens School of Fine Arts in 1932, studying under Konstantinos Parthenis. Engonopoulos gained acclaim while exhibiting in the ‘Art of Modern Greek Tradition in 1938. After this exhibition Engonopoulos devoted his time to his poetry and translations and gained acclaimed after publishing two collections of poems just two short years after his exhibition. Engonopoulos’s work was highly thought of and he was considered by most as one of the finest surrealist poets of Greece. Engonopoulos held his first solo one-man show in 1939. After an impressive career as an artist and a poet Engonopoulos sadly died of a heart attack in 1985 in Athens.