Aglaia Papa was born in Corfu in 1904. Her family lived in
Janicat, then in the
Ottoman Empire, now in Albania. Her older sister
Katina Papa (1903–57) would become a well-known author. When she was a teenager the Papa family fled persecution by Turks and Albanians in the region and settled in Corfu. She attended courses in painting in Corfu with Marco Zavitzianos and
Konstantinos Parthenis. She studied at the
Athens School of Fine Arts under
Nikolaos Lytras,
Konstantinos Parthenis and Thomas Thomopoulos. After graduating she continued to study in
Trieste,
Milan and
Vienna, where she took classes in art history. She returned to Greece and became a teacher of painting and decorative arts at the Vocational School of Amalieiou Orphanage. After the death of her sister Katina she arranged for publication of Katina's novel "In a girls' high school" and a collection of Katina's poems. Aglaia Papa died in
Piraeus in 1984. ==Work==