The Greek Sale

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Lot 66
  • 66

Yiannis Gaitis

Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 GBP
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Description

  • Yiannis Gaitis
  • motorcyclist
  • signed lower right; signed on the reverse

  • oil on canvas

  • 132 by 99cm., 52 by 39in.

Provenance

Purchased in Cyprus circa 1970-71 by the present owner

Literature

Loretta Gaitis-Charrat, Catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre de Yannis Gaitis, Angers, 2003, p. 240, no. 933, illustrated 

Catalogue Note

After completing his studies at the School of Fine Arts in Athens, Gaitis moved to Paris in 1954 and subsequently divided his time between these two cities. Around 1960 he developed a rich expressionistic vocabulary to fashion biomorphic forms that later gradually evolved into stereotypical human figures. 

Treating this subject over and over again, Yiannis Gaitis became famous for this depiction of 'little men' - figures without specific features that represented man as the product of mass culture, whose behaviour is uniform, predictable, and anonymous. Gaitis is commenting on the sterility of contemporary mass living, which implied the subjugation of individual identity to mundane communality, and its eventual loss in the modern world.