Theodoros Stamos

Galerie Turske & Turske, Zurich

Theodoros Stamos was one of the original abstract expressionists working in New York City in the 1940s and 50s. His interest in nature, Surrealism, primitive arts and Asian Mysticism helped him to synthesize a non-representational language, which he emphasized with subtle gradations of colour and form on which he imposed calligraphic configurations.

Born to Greek immigrants in New York City as the fourth of six children, Stamos was awarded a scholarship to the American Artists' School aged fourteen, where he studied sculpture. This was his only formal art education and when he turned to painting in 1939 he was considered by his peers to be a self-taught painter, an artist who relied on the tools and models available to and observable by him. By the late 1940s Stamos was an established member of the abstract expressionists. His interests were closely related to this circle of painters, who during the 1940s and 1950s searched for profound truth and universally significant content through myth and biomorphic abstraction, which Stamos, similarly to Rothko, conveyed through expressive colour fields. His aim was to create imagery that was drawn from nature and would be universal in spirit. Typically his canvases consist of large, flat areas of few colours applied in close, expressive brushstrokes.

From 1970 on, Stamos spent part of every year on the island of Lefkada in Greece, where he started his Infinity series. All Stamos' works from 1971 to the 1990s were part of this Infinity Field series, which comprised several sub-series. The earliest of these were geometrical, near hard-edge works using warm, harmonious colours. From 1980 to 1982 this sub-series contained several works in homage of Caspar David Friedrich, his Lefkada Series, as well as the Marathon, Knossos, Nemea, Delphi, Yerico and Jerusalem series. As in almost all his work, nature is the prime subject in the Infinity Field series, as is revealed by the dark earth colours and irregular forms that characterize its constituent paintings.