Kimon Nicolaïdes
Kimon Nicolaїdes was an American artist, educator, and author. During World War I, he served in the United States Army in France as a camouflage artist. He taught at the Art Students League of New York after the war. Nicolaїdes' book The Natural Way to Draw provided a new method of teaching drawing, and was widely used.
Early life
Nicolaïdes was born in Washington, D.C., to Kimon Nicolaïdes, an immigrant from Greece, and Louisa, a member of an Irish-American family rooted in Saratoga Springs, New York. His father worked as an importer of Asian artifacts. Nicolaïdes was the third of four children. He made his living initially by a variety of jobs, including picture framing, journalism, and even by appearing once in a film as an extra, playing the role of an art student.Despite his family's opposition, he did in fact become an art student, during which he attended the Art Students League of New York in New York City, where he studied with John Sloan, George Bridgman, and Kenneth Hayes Miller. At the Art Students League, he met the avant-garde couple Wilhelmina Weber Furlong and her husband Thomas Furlong.
Career
He served in the U.S. Army in France during World War I, where he was one of the first American camouflage artists, serving in the American Camouflage Corps alongside Barry Faulkner, Sherry Edmundson Fry, Abraham Rattner and others. Among his wartime duties, he often worked with contour maps.Nicolaïdes worked as a member of the board of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation which administered the foundation and managed the Tiffany's Laurelton Hall estate.