As early as 1948, Theodoros Stamos placed the processing of light impressions at the centre of his work. His pictorial world focuses on the four elements: light, air, earth and water. The picture becomes a metaphor for the forms of an original nature, which for the artist are manifestations of inner states. Home of the Sun from 1957 marks the transition to his first series of works, Sunboxes. It was created between 1962 and 1970 and is made up of works that are relatively calm and restrained. The extensive series titled Infinity Fields followed from 1970. In addition to his work as an artist, Stamos taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where Kenneth Noland was among his students.
Theodoros Stamos (1922–1997)
Home of the Sun, 1957
Currently exhibited: Yes (Gallery: Boundless Painting)
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 213.7 x 177.8 cm
Inv-Nr.: B_066
Image rights: The Theodoros Stamos Estate, Jason Savas, New York
Keywords:
Previous owner: André Emmerich Gallery, New York; Galleria del Naviglio, Milan; private collection
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Christie’s, London, 2010
The visual world of Theodoros Stamos is composed of the four elements: light, air, earth and water. The picture becomes a metaphor for the forms of an original nature. In an interview for the Whitney Museum in 1947, he said: ‘I am concerned with the Ancestral Image which is a journey through the shells and webbed entanglements of the phenomenon. The end of such a journey is the impulse of remembrance and the picture created is the embodiment of the Ancestral World that exists on the horizon of mind and coast.’ [1] In this context, the painting Home of the Sun is quite exemplary. As early as 1948, the processing of light phenomena moved to the centre of Stamos’ work. It is less a matter of the external formal element than of the translation into the artist’s inner impressions. Home of the Sun from 1957 marks the transition from this creative period to his first series of works, Sunboxes, in which he reduces his formal language to rectangles and lines. The extensive series titled Infinity Fields followed from 1970.
The colour spaces that he creates are separated from one another and create a structure of tension. The straightness of the paintings brings a serenity and tranquillity that can only be felt by observing an experience of nature.
The son of Greek immigrants, Theodoros Stamos grew up in a large family on the Lower East Side, Manhattan. In 1936, at the age of fourteen, he received a scholarship to the American Artist Society, where he met his mentor Joseph Soleman, who was active in the artist group The Ten, along with Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko. Soleman encouraged Stamos to paint, introduced him to the work of artists Arthur Dove, Milton Avery and Paul Klee, and sent him to the most modern galleries of the time to study on his own. In addition to being an artist, Stamos taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where his students included Kenneth Noland.
[1] The Tiger’s Eye, December 1947, quoted in Barbara Cavaliere: ‘Theodoros Stamos: On the Horizon of Spirit and Shore’, in: Theodoros Stamos: Works from 1945–1984, ed. by B. Cavaliere and T. Wolff, Zurich, Vienna 1984/85, p. 13.
