Skies

We've had some amazing skies recently. Sitting on the terrace, sipping a glass of chilled wine with this view in front of you - bliss!

This was last night. Just beautiful.

 

This was two days ago. It's apocalyptic. The reason why the sun looks like this is because the whole of the city is covered in a grey cloud of smoke due to the fires that have been raging on mount Parnitha for the last few days. 

The fire was under control yesterday but it started again overnight and the situation today is critical. Firefighters are trying to control the fire. In the meantime, the whole city is smothered by smoke: the sky is a dark grey, and the smell of burning is overwhelming. The only sound is the barking of the dogs. Apocalyptic. 

I am stuck indoors: I have asthma and smoke brings on an attack, so I am staying put today.

The Essence of Anonymity, Yannis Gaitis - 2

The Essence of Annonymity by Yannis Gaitis

at the Theocharakis Foundation.

This is the second post on this exhibition - you can see the first one here .

In this second post I am including the introduction from the first post, plus more on the work that Gaitis is most famous for.

 

Born in 1923, Gaitis studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and in 1949 he participated with Alekos Kontopoulos and other artists who had turned to abstract art, in the founding of the group The Extremists, a group which was opposed to academic art.  In 1954 he went to Paris where he completed his studies. He started by painting portraits and then moved on to work that was influenced by Surrealism and Picasso. He quickly moved on to abstract expressionism and surrealist compositions, then cubist and geometric paintings and sculptures. During this stage of his work we detect the first traces of pop art's influence.

From the middle Sixties he began to make his Little People: blank-faced, uniform, anonymous, homogeneous, interchangeable.  As the colonels in Greece staged their coup and set up a dictaroship, the expressionistic human profile with the hat appears in his paintings, the motif he is going to simplity and geometricalise turning it into a trade-mark of his work. This alienation in modern society was the main focus of his artistic career, the dominant and distinctive feature in his work. His style is established as pop-art. The formalistic repetition marks the painting of Gaitis from then on and up to his death. At the same petiod he paints the 'Assassination of Freedom', in which a series of soldiers shoot a pigeon.

This second post on Yannis Gaitis' work consists of the work he is most famous for, his hundreds of protagonists who we sometimes encounter on the surface of a canvas and sometimes they come out of it. They are his Little People - men without an identity usually wearing a wide-brimmed hat and carrying a briefcase. Expressionsless and stereotypical figures, always lined up in groups, usually in plaid or stripped suits 

It is no coincidence that Gaitis pleaced these Little People outside, in the streets, allowing direct contact with the public, such as the encounter that occurred during his 1975 exhibition at the City Hall of Kokkinia (a working class area) where the stylised figures, along with countless colourful flags, decorated the street and the square in front of the City Hall. There, his work entered everyday life, leaving the spaces of museums.

This is Gaitis' own interpretation of pop art and his own answers to the great questions of our time. His Little People also travel to the distant past, to our ancient past, asking us to identify their ontological presence within history.

Untitled, 1968, (oil on canvas)

The Old and the Young, 1968, (oil on canvas)

Monoplane, 1968, (oil on canvas)

In the Yard of Miracles, 1966, (oil on canvas)

Human Landscape, or Contrasts, 1977, (oil on canvas)

Exhibition or Street Spectators, 1974-75, (oil on canvas)

Litany or The Red and the Black, 1977, (oil on canvas and painted wood)

looking closer at the sculpted part

The Bird, (painted wood)

looking at the sculpted part

and again

Odysseus and the Sirens, 1979-1980, (oil on canvas)

Oh! Gods, (or Symplegades), 1980, (oil on canvas)

Delos, 1979-80, (oil on canvas)

Monument and Angel, 1979-80, (oil on canvas)

Hommage to Delos, 1979-80, (oil on canvas)

You and Us, (or The Parade) 1977, (oil on canvas)

Multiple Boxes, 1971, (oil on canvas)

The sculptures in the middle of the exhibition space

Personal Transportation, 1978-79, ( painted wood and metal)

Five to Six, 1970, (painted wood)

Untitled, (painted wood)

detail

The Essence of Anonymity, Yannis Gaitis - 1

Yannis Gaitis - The Essence of Anonymity

at the Theocharakis Foundation.

Born in 1923, Gaitis studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts and in 1949 he participated with Alekos Kontopoulos and other artists who had turned to abstract art in the founding of the group The Extremists, a group which was opposed to academic art.  In 1954 he went to Paris where he completed his studies. He started by painting portraits and then moved on to work that was influenced by Surrealism and Picasso. He quickly moved on to abstract expressionism and surrealist compositions, then cubist and geometric paintings and sculptures. During this stage of his work we detect the first traces of pop art's influence.

From the middle Sixties he began to make his Little People': blank-faced, uniform, anonymous, homogeneous, interchangeable.  As the colonels in Greece staged their coup and set up a dictaroship, the expressionistic human profile with the hat appears in his paintings, the motif he is going to simplify and geometricalise turning it into a trade-mark of his work. This alienation in modern society was the main focus of his artistic career, the dominant and distinctive feature in his work. His style is established as pop-art. The formalistic repetition marks the painting of Gaitis from then on and up to his death. At the same petiod he paints the 'Assassination of Freedom', in which a group of soldiers shoot a pigeon.

The first part of the exhibition consists of portraits of his family and his wife, the sculptor Gabriella Simossi, with whom he worked in Paris. Simossi's artworks were also on view and will be the subject of a future post.

The second part of the exhibition consists of works that are influenced by abstract expressionism, surrealism, cubist and other geometric compositions. The last two paintings in this section (and the end of this post) show the direction his work was taking, namely repeating men dressed in hats and plaid jackets, the men who represent our society and its alienation.

The third part, is the part that consists of the work he is most famous for, and will be the subject of the next post.

Mairoula, 1945, (oil on canvas)

Odysseas Elytis, 1945, (oil on canvas)

My Brother Tryphonas, 1945, (oil on cardboard)

Portrait of a Woman, 1945, (oil on canvas)

Portrait of Gabriella Simossi, 1951, (oil on canvas)

Hydra, (Portrait of Gabriella Simossi), 1952, (oil on canvas)

Portrait of Gabriella Simossi, 1950, (oil on canvas)

Portrait of Gabriella Simossi, 1950, (oil on canvas)

The Embarkation of Aphoridite, (Portrait of Gabriella Simossi), 1952, (oil on canvas)

Portrait of Gabriella Simossi, 1947, (oil on canvas)

looking closer

Hydra, 1951-52, (oil on canvas)

Untitled, 1955, (oil on canvas)

Seashell, 1948, (oil on canvas)

Horse, 1950, (oil on canvas)

Untitled, 1950, (oil on canvas)

detail

Untitled, 1954, (oil on canvas)

Untitled, 1955, (oil on canvas)

Dog, 1957, (oil on canvas)

Foliage, 1959, (oil on canvas)

Unit (Diptych), 1963-64, (oil on canvas)

Untitled, 1966, (oil on canvas)

Untitled, 1956, (oil on canvas)

Newlyweds, 1967, (oil on canvas)

Untitled, (oil on canvas)