Drossos Skyllas

1912-1973 · Chicago, USA

A Greek accountant who wanted to paint one hundred percent like photographs, and in just 35 canvases went somewhere far stranger than photography.

The life

Skyllas was born in 1912 on the island of Kalymnos, longed to paint, and was steered by his family into accountancy for his father’s tobacco business. After the Second World War he emigrated to Chicago with his wife Iola and never took another job: she worked, he painted, full time, for the rest of his life. He taught himself in the galleries of the Art Institute of Chicago, was juried into its Chicago and Vicinity exhibitions between 1955 and 1973, priced his pictures at the rates of successful contemporaries, and sold almost nothing. He died in 1973.

The work

Oil on canvas, roughly 35 paintings in a lifetime: nudes, children, pets, icons and landscapes rendered with a mosaic-fine precision, using brushes he made himself because none on sale were fine enough. The hyper-clarity tips ordinary subjects into something dreamlike. His work is held by the American Folk Art Museum, Intuit in Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Why we love them

Thirty five paintings, zero compromises. He set the price of his devotion and let the world decline it.

Go deeper

• Drossos Skyllas at the Outsider Art Fair
• Intuit Art Museum, Chicago
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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