The sculptor MichalIs Tombros was born in Athens in 1889 and passed away in the same city in 1974.
He came from a family of marble sculptors from the island of Andros.
He studied at the School of Arts under professors G. Vroutos and L. Sochos from 1903 to 1909. In 1914, he continued his studies at the Académie Julian in Paris (studios of L. H. Bouchard and P. M. Landowski) as a scholar of the Averoff Foundation.
In 1919, he was appointed Professor of Sculpture at the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens.
In the following years, he traveled frequently to Paris to complete commissions and lived there from 1925 to 1928. He published the magazine ’20th Century’ (1933–1934). In 1938, he became a professor at the 2nd Sculpture Studio of the Athens School of Fine Arts, a position he held until 1960.
In 1968, he was elected a regular member of the Academy of Athens and served as its president in 1970.
A characteristic of his sculpture is the dualism that distinguishes his public commissions (such as the model for the statue of the poet Rupert Brooke on Skyros) from his private works. The statue of Rupert Brooke, placed at the tomb of the philhellene poet on Skyros, is a representative example of the former category. Its application of the principles of Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Symbolism stands in contrast to the modernism of his free creative work.
His work was presented in solo exhibitions (‘Stratigopoulou Gallery’ 1924, Hellenic American Union 1972, etc.) and in numerous group exhibitions in Greece and abroad (‘Artistic Society’ 1908, Venice Biennale 1934, 1938, 1956, Paris, Cairo, Belgrade, São Paulo, Geneva, etc.).