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Lot 378:
Description
Signed Theodoros Stamos, Abstract Serigraph on Paper, circa 1959
Theodoros Stamos (Greek/American, 1922 – 1997), Abstract Serigraph on Paper, circa 1959. Abstract expressionist composition in orange and red dated 1959, marked 16 HC – meaning hors commerce – not meant for sale, and with dedication ‘For Laura in 1961’, on lower left. Signed lower right. All in pencil.
Stamos was one of the original and youngest abstract expressionist artists working in new york city in the 1940’s and 50’s. He was born in manhattan’s lower east side to greek immigrant parents. As a teenager, he won a scholarship to the american artists school where he studied sculpture with Simon Kennedy and Joseph Konzal. In 1943, when he was 21 years old, prominent dealer Betty Parsons offered him a solo exhibition at her wakefield gallery & bookshop. Parsons became an important ally and connection to the contemporary new york art world and he would show regularly with her until 1957.
By the mid-1940’s, his career was becoming well established – he exhibited at the whitney museum annually from 1945 to 1951, the carnegie institute and the art institute of chicago in 1947, and at the museum of modern art in 1948. The museum of modern art purchased Stamos’ ‘Sounds in the Rock’ in 1946. Also during the late 1940’s he became a member of the irascible eighteen, a group of abstract painters who protested the metropolitan museum of art’s policy towards american painting of the 1940’s and who posed for a famous picture in 1950; members of the group considered as the first generation of abstract expressionists included: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne, Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jimmy Ernst, Jackson Pollock, James Brooks, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Theodoros Stamos, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko.
He taught at black mountain college from 1950 until 1954 and from 1955 to 1975 at the art students league of new york as well as the cummington school of fine arts. Museum collections include the metropolitan museum of art; hirshhorn museum, washington, dc; national picture gallery, athens, greece; san francisco art institute; the art institute of chicago; brooklyn museum of art; chrysler art museum, norfolk, va; detroit institute of arts; the guggenheim museum; whitney museum of american art; the phillips collection; among others.
Sheet – 19 3/4" high x 17 3/4" wide. Frame – 26 3/4" high x 28" wide.
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Condition: Very good. There are a few very slight creases, and two very small pin holes to margins.
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