Yannis Gaitis was born in Athens in 1923. Interested in art very early on in life, Yannis attended the Athens School of Fine Arts between 1942 and 1948, in spite of the familial sacrifices imposed by the context of the Second World War. Despite their exorbitant prices at the time, Gaitis never lacked paints or brushes. Unfortunately, the academic environment was not as creatively nurturing as the young painter might have hoped. However, this did not deter his passion, and he simply frequented open studios, where he could freely and wildly express his creativity.
His first exhibition was organised with great secrecy and risk in 1944, in his private home, away from the eyes of the German occupants. Sheltered by the night, Gaitis and his communist comrades covered the walls of Athens with anti-fascist propaganda. Sadly for them, liberation from the German oppressor would soon be followed by the restrictions of the Greek civil war. Like most intellectuals, the painter was forced into silent hiding. He stopped exhibiting, but he did not stop painting and exploring new avenues of expression. Gaitis’ home became a clandestine meeting point for poets, writers, artists, and others to discuss art in its most contemporary forms.
Aware of the risks, Gaitis exhibited his new pieces in 1947, influenced by staple movements of 20th century modern art, such as cubism, surrealism and dadaism. Critics were quick to denounce his work, forcing the painter to continue to work in secret. When approached by the army to enrol, he feigned psychiatric troubles to avoid getting enlisted. Under close surveillance nonetheless, Gaitis played a traitorous game of cloak and dagger with the authorities for several years.
The post-civil war era gave way to an open-mindedness towards the modern masters and their followers. The likes of Picasso, Braque and Chagal were shown in Greek institutions. Motivated and inspired, Gaitis joined the Akrei group, which radically embraced novel forms of expression and rejected figuration. The group’s vernacular was unfortunately too extreme for a fragile, still healing Greece.
With no propositions in sight in Greece, Gaitis and his wife moved to Paris in 1954. The shock was significant but beneficial. He admitted in his correspondence with relatives that whereas in Greece he was 50 years ahead of his time, in Paris his art was 50 years behind. Life there was frugal but productive: Gaitis did little else but eat, sleep and paint. Opportunities finally came his way and he exhibited in the Paris, Reims, London, Germany, Italy and Brazil. He latched onto various groups and movements, seeking every opportunity to share his passion and learn from his peers.
In the 1960s came an unexpected evolution. Gaitis, the radical abstractionist, returned to figuration and saw the birth of his ‘character’, which would come to define the rest of his body of work. The ‘anthropakia’, the appearance of which was polished in the 1970s, became the key to cementing his international recognition. Finally, later than the rest of the world, Greece welcomed back its long-lost son. After a period of back-and-forth between Athens and Paris, Gaitis settled back in him hometown in 1974. Now well recognised and celebrated, his shows grew exponentially in number and importance in Greece and around the world, including in Brussels, Rome and New York.
As a bittersweet show of recognition, the city of Athens dedicated a retrospective to Gaitis’ work in 1984. Though in bad health — he was as passionate about smoking as he was about art — he held on until the inauguration, only to die a few days later. He received a national funeral after years marked by a complex relationship with his country.
