At the heart of Gramma_Epsilon Gallery our purpose is to connect the present female avant-garde with the climate of experimentation and the female-led emancipatory movements of the 1960s and 1970s. We aim to document the work of the artists of the era, a time characterised by extraordinary inventiveness and experimental strength, yet of which still little is known.
Franca Sonnino
_The Thinking Hands
Curated by Paolo Cortese and Francesco Romano Petillo
Three years after the major retrospective held in collaboration with MUACC in Cagliari, this exhibition, curated by Paolo Cortese and Francesco Romano Petillo, offers the Athenian public a curated selection of works spanning from the early 1970s to the present. The works on display provide a clear insight into the artistic journey of the Roman artist, rightly regarded as one of the mothers of Italian Fiber Art.
In her early career, Franca Sonnino created large canvases, using acrylic and tempera totrace lines – continuous, dashed, or dotted – that intersected and overlapped, forming a dense web of patterns and grids. A few years later, she began to experiment with materials from the domestic realm most frequently associated with the feminine world, such as thread, sequins, lace, and fabric.
Over time, she moved away from canvas as a medium and thread took the place of the brush. In the very early 1980s, Franca Sonnino invented the solid thread – a cotton thread reinforced with wire – through which she began to draw her universe in three dimensions.
Elisabetta Gut
_Alphabets
Curated by Paolo Cortese and Rosanna Ruscio
This is the first retrospective dedicated to the Italian-Swiss artist, who recently passed away in 2024. Aiming to document the artistic journey of Elisabetta Gut, retracing its various phases from the early 1960s onwards – spanning a period of sixty years – the exhibition will feature 70 works, including paintings, collages, sculptures, and book-objects.
After an initial figurative and post-Cubist phase, her research shifted towards something more informal. The current exhibition in Athens follows this evolution, beginning with the multi material works of the early 1960s. These include large, mainly monochrome white canvases, where objects connected to memory emerge, that the artist recovers and organises in a dreamlike and timeless, but at the same time, very material dimension.
Towards the late 1970s, Gut became involved with Visual Poetry, developing distinctive poetics that would define her work from that point on. Music, nature, and poetry were her main sources of inspiration, from which she drew elements that she reworked based on a personal system of codes with fantastical alphabets that, despite their imaginative nature, followed strict and rigorous rules.