GRAMMA_EPSILON
GALLERY

ATENE

About

Gramma_Epsilon is a gallery located in the centre of Athens, born from the shared love of 20th century Italian art by its two founders, Paolo Cortese and Francesco Romano Petillo.

The mission of the gallery is to offer a series of thematic and monographic in-depth exhibitions with the aim of sparking interest in women artists, verbal-visual experiments, artists’ books and more generally on post-war avant-garde. Particular focus is given to women artists who, by choosing to experiment in total freedom, have not conformed to the traditional rules of the market.

Gramma_epsilon is connected with the independent Roman exhibition space Lettera_E Archive with which it shares the same mission. The ‘E’, in the Italian language represents the aspects of both joining and defining, itself being derived from the Greek letter ‘epsilon’. In its original Phoenician form, epsilon was represented by a pictogram, a sort of inverted E, whose meaning of “window” perfectly represents the dual role of the gallery: to establish a space for both viewing and exhibiting.

Paolo Cortese, collector, independent curator and co-founder of the Cortese & Lisanti gallery, currently collaborates with international galleries and public institutions. Since 20 years focuses on female-artists. He lives between Athens and Rome.

Gisella Meo Soft Squares 2 — Gisella Meo Soft Squares

Francesco Romano Petillo, an expert on 20th century art, with a passion for archeology and classical culture, lives in Athens. He spent many years in London where he had a gallery in the East End, exhibiting young British artists.

BOOKS AS ART

CURRENT EXHIBITION

15 June-20 October, 2023

“Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination.”
Jorge Luis Borges

From June 15 to October 20, Gramma Epsilon Gallery in Athens presents the group exhibition “Books as Art” curated by Paolo Cortese, with the Patronage of the Italian Institute of Culture in Athens. The exhibition, dedicated to the book as a form of art, showcases works of artists from different generations and nationalities. Concrete and verbo-visual works that date back to the 1960s are placed in a dialogue with works by artists of later generations who continue to explore the multiple possibilities of the book as an expression of their art.

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