 In the early 20th century Demetrios Galanis, a contemporary and friend of Picasso, achieved wide recognition in France and lifelong membership of the Académie française following his acclaim by the critic Andre Malreaux as an artist capable "of stirring emotions as powerful as those of Giotto".Later in the century Nikos Engonopoulos achieved international recognition with his surrealist conceptions both of painting and poetry, while in the late 1960s Dimitris Mytaras and Yiannis Psychopedis became associated with European critical realism.Impressionism was the original influence on the leading figures of the art of the first half of the 20th century, Konstantinos Parthenis and Konstantinos Maleas, while Nikiphoros Lytras associated himself with the avant-garde groups of Munich constituting the last known link with the series of painters in the great tradition of Munich in Greek art .