Caïmis, Julius
CAÏMIS, JULIUS
CAÏMIS, JULIUS (1897–1982), Greek author and translator, artist; son of Moisis *Caïmis. Julius Caïmis was born in Corfu and studied at the School of Fine Arts of the Polytechnic University of Athens. In the mid-1920s, in Rome, he succeeded his father as a contributor to the newspaper La Tribuna. Knowing Greek, Italian, French, and even Sanskrit, he translated Hesiod, Benedetto Croce, Tagore, Macchiavelli, Michelangelo, and Goldoni. His works include Exi kanones zoghrafikyes ("Six Laws of Art," 1937); Vivlikyes istories ("Bible Stories," 1954), based on rabbinic sources; and La comédie grecque dans l'âme du théâtre d'ombres (1935). His texts were published in prominent Greek periodicals like Ellinikia Grammata (1918–29), Nea Estia (1931–36), Techni (1938), Neoelliniki Logotechnia (1940), I Stoa (1971), and Grammata (1976), and newspapers like Kathimerini, Ethniki, and Dimotis. He also published in the Italian periodicals Cinza and Olympio. In the last decade of his life, he published Greek Landscapes (1973), writings of his travels accompanied by his and other drawings, Traditions (1975), aesthetic texts concerning devotional art, and Myths (1979), a collection of fairy tales with drawings.
His art work consisted of oil paintings, sketches, and watercolor paintings of landscapes throughout Greece and reflecting his foreign travels to Palestine, Syria, Yemen, and Italy. While most of his art never was published or displayed, he mostly devoted his endeavors to writing about art and translating. Throughout his life, he devoted his work to the Shadow Theater and the neglected figure of Karaghiozis. In 1935, he published in French Karaghiozi ou la comédie grecque dans l'ame du théatre d'ombres with the German printmaker Hap Grieshaber and painter Klaus Vrieslander. Caimis extensively researched its origins and evolution. In 1937, he published The History and Art of Karaghiozis. He continued to publish articles on Karaghiozis as late as the 1970s.
add. bibliography:
M. Fais, Giulio Caimi (2003).
[Yitzchak Kerem (2nd ed.)]