Tribute to the great artist who gave us the ‘little man’

Yannis Gaitis (1923-1984) in front of one of his iconic “little man” pieces in Paris in 1967. The respected Greek sculptor and painter is the subject of a career-spanning exhibition beginning this week at the B&M Theocharakis Foundation in Athens, marking 100 years since his birth. Gaitis’ first “little man” was created in 1967, shortly after the April 21 colonels’ coup. “People do not want to see themselves as a ‘little man.’ They prefer to look at a pebble, or a flower or something else, but never at a ‘little man.’ ‘I am not that,’ they like to tell themselves. But they are,” the artist said of the suited and hatted figures that became a key motif of his work.