The engraver Demetrios Galanis was born in Athens in 1879 and passed away in Paris in 1966.
His artistic career began around 1897, when he started collaborating with newspapers and magazines as a sketch artist and caricaturist. After two years at the School of Civil Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (1897–1899) and having taken drawing lessons from Nikiforos Lytras (1899), he settled permanently in Paris in 1900. Until 1902, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under Fernand Cormon, while continuing to publish caricatures and drawings in French publications until 1912. In 1918, he began to engage systematically with book illustration, and gradually, printmaking—specifically woodcut and etching—absorbed him almost exclusively.Influenced by Fauvism during his caricature period, he transitioned around 1912 to a synthesis of Cubism and its perspective problems. He later moved toward a Cézannian perspectival distortion, eventually arriving at a personal, geometric, and rhythmic stylization of nature, as well as classical-style solutions.
He presented his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Paris, London, Brussels, New York, and elsewhere. He taught at the Académie André Lhote (1925–1928), at his own studio (1930–1937), and at the École des Beaux-Arts (1945–1952).
In 1945, he was elected a member of the Académie Française, and in 1950, a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens.
A retrospective exhibition was organized at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation on the island of Andros in 1991.