Ersi Gallery has the pleasure to present Kostas Grammatopoulos and Alcmene Nikolaidou in the context of the double solo exhibitions event.

Opening: Thursday, January 18, 2018 at 19:30pm

Chrysanthos Christou writes, “The artist-teacher Kostas Grammatopoulos is one of the most remarkable and distinctive voices of the Modern Greek printmaking. He studied printmaking at the Athens School of Fine Arts under Kefallinos. Grammatopoulos is involved in etching, but he excels at woodcut using unique techniques. He imposes himself on all of his works using his distinctive, rich morphoplastic language, his particular technique and the nature of his quests. His subjects are always related to the visual reality and mostly to the natural surroundings. Moreover, he succeeds to transfer the stimuli of his surroundings in expressive wordings that combine spontaneity and inwardness, expressive power and poetic content…

The coloring of his characters –it should be noted that Grammatopoulos does color printmaking, color woodcut, and color lithography- stands out due to his preference for the earthy tones and the restrained colors: the neutral and the cool ones, the blue and the grey ones, which suggest the inner content of his subjects.The distinctive technique and the exceptionally effective use of the possibilities of the line and the qualities of the color, reveal new sides of the subjects that concern him. With the shaping of the forms and the submissive power of the color, the personal reference of the surroundings and the combination of strict organization and often ornamental types, the artist achieves highly expressive results. The clean lines, the safety, the spontaneity, the ingenuity, the quality of the wordings and the expressive truth of his printmaking present us the personal encounters of the artist with the world as well as with his student, Alcmene Nikolaidou, who attended his studio at the Athens School of Fine Arts, in 1959.”

According to Lena Katsarou-Kokkini, “The characteristics of Nikolaidou’s artworks are: the wisely studied line, the play with the curves, the clean forms and colors in all variations. One of her main subjects is the female figure. The artist follows its gradual development: the childishness, the innocence, the insecurity and the motherhood. Her female figures are slender, almost adolescent, serious and slightly scared, strong and at the same time sensitive and indolent, weak and at the same time sensual, and tender due to the motherhood and again strong because of it.

Another characteristic is the firmness of her lines. Using the line as the imaginary curve of the woman’s thighs, make them look like pebbles or like a caterpillar from where a butterfly is about to come out. Yet this does not happen. The artist wants the viewer to find on his / her own the Ariadne’s thread within the labyrinth of the female soul. However, the intentional shaking off of the ‘FEMALE MYTH’ in her artistic expression cannot be found…”

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