From 16 May to 29 June 2025, the Athens City Gallery will host the first retrospective exhibition of the painter and printmaker Martinos Gavathas, entitled ” Synapses “, which is supported by the OPANDA, and curated by Elisavet Plessa.

The exhibition will present approximately 90 works on paper, canvas and wood, as well as works created by the artist using a personal woodcut collage technique. Connecting the outside with the inside, the imaginary with the real, the past with the present, the fusion of opposites, both on a conceptual and visual level, is a dominant aim of the quests of Martinos Gavathas, who was born in Evia in 1943 and died in Athens, suddenly, on March 4.

The work of Gavathas, who taught drawing and painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1977 to 2006, is extremely complex. Creating small and large works antithetical between painting and printmaking, he wanted the coexistence of a theoretical and artistic work, the visual formulation of a philosophical background and the conclusion of the conceptual and visual aspects of the image, but where visual emotion always has the first word.

This retrospective presentation follows a linear chronological progression, but its four sections contain works from all periods of Martinos Gavathas’ creative career, in order to highlight the eclectic affinities between the visual and ideological axes that run through the artist’s thoughts and work.

The exhibition begins with the early creations of Martinos Gavathas, in which the sensitivity of his adolescent eye can be seen in scenes of everyday life. Later, in the 1970s, in delicate landscapes and still lifes, the influence of printmaking with the angular forms of woodcuts becomes apparent, leading him to a cubist approach to space and the human form, with his love of Braque evident. The second section of the exhibition presents two seemingly unconnected aspects of Gavathas’ work, which formed the content of his unique solo exhibition (Medusa Art Gallery, Athens, 1986). On layers of materials and fragmentary images, in three monumental compositions, which are presented in a special way at the Athens City Gallery, Gavathas paints his gaze, his conversation with specific works of Greek and world art -Fayum, Van Gogh, Rothko, Hockney, Tsarouchis – and the relationship of his own art with them, placing his visual reflections, but also his own form, between the painterly and the real space, between the canvas and his studio.

At the same time, as in his exhibition at Medusa, this section presents works of a personal technique of his, the woodcut collages, in which he creates abstract compositions with strips of large woodcuts that he cuts up, creating a new image from a pre-existing image. The third section of the exhibition presents large and complex woodcut collages alongside large-scale paintings with direct references to large-scale painting, which he created after 1986 and up to 2018. The iconographic starting point of these works is the root of trees, and he ironically titles this whole section of his work “Return to Roots”, expressing his belief that there is no return to roots because “a root is one, all others are variations of it”. The fourth and final section of the exhibition presents paintings from the late creative period of his work (2015-2019): with a parallel use of collage, he depicts the tools of his painting, to which he pays a last tribute of conceptual implications, conflating the manuality of his art with his questioning of the hidden meanings of the image.

The exhibition is curated by Elisavet Plessa and its architectural design is signed by Stavros Papagiannis (Stage Design Office).

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated monograph on the work of Martinos Gavathas, edited by Elisavet Plessa and designed by Erifili Arapoglou (enARTE). This bilingual (Greek-English) volume includes texts by Daphne Angelidou, Dimitris Demirolis, Christoforos Marinos, and Elisavet Plessa.

Audience Tours

On Saturday 24 May, Saturdays 14, 21, 28 June, and Sunday 29 June (last day of the exhibition) at 12.30 pm, guided tours open to the public will be held by the curator of the exhibition and the publication, Elisavet Plessa.

The opening of the exhibition will take place on Friday 16 May 2025, 18:00-22.00.

Duration: 16 May – 29 June 2025
Opening Hours: Tuesday- Saturday 11:00 – 19:00, Sundays 10:00 – 16:00, Mondays closed

Admission is free

Athens City Gallery, Building A:
Leonidou& Myllerou, Avdi Sq., Metaxourgeio
Information: 210 5202420| www.opanda.gr