Thalia Flora was born in 1871 in
Siatista,
Western Macedonia. In 1874 she moved with her family to
Istanbul. There she obtained a scholarship that let her study from 1883 to 1888 at the Zappeion School for Girls. After graduating she worked as a teacher for a year. She decided to study painting and in 1895 moved to
Munich where she worked with
Georgios Jakobides (1853–1932) and
Nikolaos Gyzis (1842–1901). As a woman she was unable to attend the
Munich Academy of Fine Arts, but instead took courses in design and painting in a private school. She studied beside artists such as
Nikolaos Vokos (1859–1902), Paul Nauen (1859–1932),
Anton Ažbe (1862–1905) and
Walter Thor (1870–1929). She returned to Istanbul in 1898, then went back to Munich until 1900. Flora traveled to various cities in
Europe. In 1906 she staged a joint exhibition in
Athens with
Sophia Laskaridou. While visiting
Egypt in 1907 she married the journalist Nicholas Karavia. She made
Alexandria her home for the next thirty years. She founded and ran an
art school there. During the
Balkan Wars of 1912–13 she decided to follow the Greek troops as
correspondent for the Alexandrian newspaper directed by her husband. Her drawings recorded the lives of the troops, refugees and casualties in an almost
impressionist style. They were published in the 1936 book
Impressions of the 1912–1913 war in Macedonia and Epirus. She also recorded the
Asia Minor Campaign of 1921 and the Albanian Front during the
Greco-Italian War of 1940–41. In 1940 Flora-Karavia moved to
Greece, where she lived for the remainder of her life. She died in Athens in 1960. ==Work==