Garden in Corfu

A large part of the subject-matter of Angelos Giallinas, a painter who worked par excellence in water-colour, includes landscapes of Corfu, his birthplace and also the place where he settled after his studies in Rome, Naples, and Venice. Much-travelled, he produced by the technique of water-colour a host of views and scenes of places which he visited, work which he exhibited repeatedly both in Greece and abroad. He was associated with the Scuola di Posilipo, founded in Naples by the painter Giacinto Gigante - the best-known school of water-colour - and transferred his pictures on to paper with sensitivity and spontaneity, features which can be conveyed in a special way by water-colour, but without neglecting careful detailed depiction through a comprehensive knowledge of design, or accuracy in the positioning of pure bright colour shades.
The colours of Giallinas, together with his superb design, produced a series of works with magical colour lucidity and brilliance. He does not depict his landscapes through the eyes of a traveller, but handles the subject in accordance with the principles of Italian Verism, while his oeuvre is dominated by the noble, warm particularity of character of the Southern European. Innocent of the photographic rendering of the romantic realism of the travellers, men of letters, and painters who visited Greece in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, his work brings to light life experiences of the artist which are given expression through the technique of water-colour, a sensitive colour range, and a meticulous brush-stroke.