33 - Theodoros Stamos (1922-1997) | Greek-American

Theodoros Stamos (1922-1997) | Greek-American Untitled, c. 1960s Oil on Canvas Signed: Signed in Greek letters ‘Σταμος’ (lower right). Dimensions: Artwork: 146 × 109 cm | 57.5 × 42.9 in Provenance: Private Collection, New York. Acquired from the above in 1996; thence by descent. Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2016. Condition: Oil on canvas, unlined, on a keyed stretcher with cross bars. The canvas has been re-stretched; neither the stretcher nor the reverse of the canvas carries inscriptions. The paint layer is stable; a fine network of age craquelure in the pale ground, most visible in the lower right around the signature, and light surface dirt; unframed. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report. Conditions of Sale: All lots are sold as is, in the condition described. The condition summary is given as a courtesy; a full condition report is available on request before the sale. Attributions are governed by our Terms and Conditions. All enquiries must be made before bidding; no further information can be provided after the sale. By placing a bid you confirm that you have read and accept our Terms and Conditions in full, as set out in the terms of this sale. Shipping: Aurora & Athena coordinates professional, insured shipping for every purchase through vetted logistics partners: packing, transport, insurance and the export paperwork are arranged on the buyer's behalf and charged at the provider's cost. Buyers are equally welcome to collect in Barcelona or to appoint a carrier of their own. Lots are released once the total purchase price has been received. For shipments outside the EU an export licence may be required and Spanish export duties may apply to certain higher-value works; these are the buyer's responsibility. No export tax applies within the EU. Full shipping and export information is available on request. -- Two torn shapes hang in a field of white: a blaze of red and orange high on the right, a smaller, darker knot of black and slate below it to the left, each brushed outward from its centre so that its edges fray into the ground. The white is not empty. It is worked in broad, overlapping strokes of pearl, grey-blue and cream with a breath of rose, and along the bottom edge runs a single narrow band of ultramarine, a horizon that turns the field above it into sky, snow or sea. The language is that of Theodoros Stamos at the turn of the 1960s, when the youngest painter of the first Abstract Expressionist generation, one of the ‘Irascibles’ photographed for Life in 1950, emptied his canvases to luminous fields in which a few dark or burning masses float above a low band, the pictures he called High Snow–Low Sun, before the geometry of the Sun-Boxes. Stamos was born in New York to Greek parents, and here, as on a number of canvases of these years, he signed his name in Greek letters. At nearly a metre and a half high the painting has the scale he gave his principal works of the period.