The exhibition records Gaitis’ course from the mid-1940s to the early 1980s, from his first paintings -in which one can trace influences from Surrealism and Pablo Picasso in particular - to his quest for abstraction; from his narrative microcosms to his anonymous, blank-faced, and uniform men, with their striped and plaid costumes; the little people with whom he identifies and asks us to identify. These figures represent man’s alienation in modern society, which became the most dominant and distinctive feature in Gaitis’ work.
“His little men, the culmination and mature expression of his artistic quest is among the most recognizable and emblematic images of a creator with a non-negotiable socio-political attitude and unfettered critical spirit; a bold and subversive artist, a revolutionary,” said the organizers of the exhibition.
Yannis Gaitis was born in Athens in 1923 and studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Konstantinos Parthenis. Being oriented towards the European avant-garde movement from the start, Gaitis was to become one of post-war Greece’s earliest modernist painters. In 1944, he held his first solo exhibition in his studio in Athens which, since then, became a meeting point for renowned personalities from the field of Arts and Literature, including Miltos Sachtouris, Yannis Tsarouchis, Minos Argyrakis, and Odysseas Elytis.
A couple of years later, his second show at the Parnassos Literary Society caused a stir, because of the audacious form of his works, which already contained surrealist, cubist, and abstract elements; he was also a founding member – together with Alekos Kontopoulos and other artists who had turned to abstract art- of “The Extremists” group which was opposed to academic art.
