Footnotes

Provenance
André Emmerich Gallery, New York.
Acquired from the above sale in 1961 by J.D. Murchison.
Galerie Pudelko, Bonn (1990-2010).

Expositions
Centro Culturale Candiani, Mestre, Italy, Jackson Pollock: The Irascibles and the New York School, March 23–30 June 30, 2002.
Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, Why Nature? Hofmann, Mitchell, Pousette-Dart, Stamos, October 30–December 6, 2014.
Octavia Art Gallery New Orleans, Pop Abstraction, August 6–September 24, 2016.
Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, Theodoros Stamos: Contemplations on the Universal, January 26–March 4, 2017, no. 5.
Hollis Taggart, Southport, CT, Line, Shape, Color, and Form, November 6–December
11, 2021.

Littérature
Bruno Alfiere and Achille Bonito Oliva, Jackson Pollock: The Irascibles and the New York School (Milan: Skira, 2002), p. 221.
Why Nature: Hofmann, Mitchell, Pousette-Dart, Stamos (New York: Hollis Taggart
Galleries, 2014), pl. 16.
Theodoros Stamos: Contemplations on the Universal (New York: Hollis Taggart
Galleries, 2017), pl. 5.
Ratcliff, Carter, "Living Color," Art & Antiques, November 2017, illus., cover and p. 72.


Theodoros Stamos explored myriad nature-based interpretations throughout his career, ultimately developing a modern aesthetic that celebrated the sublime
supremacy of this subject. Recognized as one of the "Irascibles" featured by Life Magazine in 1951, Stamos was the youngest of this first generation of Abstract Expressionists.
Throughout his career Stamos explored the rich potential of primeval forms, rendering evocative paintings such as Three Kings, an early primitivizing image that demonstrates the artist's fascination with inchoate forms and primordial forces. The dark shapes suggest geologic strata, simultaneously organic and archaic. Three Kings evokes a modern investigation of ancient ideas surrounding cycles of birth, death, and growth–both biological and spiritual. The title suggests Christian heritage; Stamos was an enthusiastic student of the world's belief systems and would visit Jerusalem three decades later. He was also interested in natural history; as he explained in a 1947 article in the journal Tiger's Eye, "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

Through the materials of painting, Stamos aimed to capture vivid, momentary
sensations. In 1936, at the age of 14, Stamos was awarded a scholarship to study sculpture at the American Artists' School in New York. Through his early training there, Stamos was introduced to many active artists in New York, such as Mark Rothko, William Baziotes, and Adolph Gottlieb, all of whom were founding members of the avant-garde group known as "The Ten." By 1939 Stamos had dedicated himself to painting, entirely self-taught, and displayed an early interest in the American artists Milton Avery and Arthur Dove.
To support himself in the early years of his career, Stamos worked in a frame shop on 18th street, from 1941-1948, which offered exposure to the art of Paul Klee and Arshile Gorky in addition to well-known contemporary artists practicing in Manhattan. Although his work from the forties bear a striking resemblance to the biomorphism of Gorky or of Joan Miró, Stamos emphasized his admiration for the early American abstractions of Dove whom he saw as a "spiritual father."
Noted art dealer Betty Parsons discovered Theodoros Stamos in 1943 and offered him his first solo show at the Wakefield Gallery at the age of 21, with Barnett Newman writing the introduction. He would go on to exhibit at the Betty Parsons Gallery from 1947-1956, a key venue for contemporary American art. The artist's early works reflected an expanding interest in natural history and eastern ideas. With bookshelves populated by Seaside Studies in Natural History and The Wisdom of the East, Stamos emphasized oneness with landscape, both an American and an Eastern idea, in his "memory pictures."

The late 1940s was an important period for Stamos. The Museum of Modern Art
purchased his painting Sounds in the Rock in 1947, and Betty Parsons included Stamos in her exhibition, The Ideographic Picture, organized by Newman the same year.
Along with Newman, Stamos was shown alongside Hans Hofmann, and Mark Rothko.
Included in the show were Stamos's paintings Sacrifice and Imprint, both titles
addressing the themes of ancient growth and primitive impulses suggested in Three Kings. As Newman wrote in the introduction for the catalogue accompanying the younger artist's solo exhibition at Betty Parsons that same year: "Stamos redefines the pastoral experience as one of participation with the inner life of the natural phenomenon...One might say that instead of going to the rock, he comes out of it."²

Betty Parsons echoed this association with the earth, describing Stamos as "very, very intrigued with everything that came out of the earth or went into the earth." ³

A lover of travel, in 1947 Stamos travelled throughout the United States, visiting New Mexico, California, and the Northwest. During this period he painted watercolours filled with stones and plant clippings observed in his travels. In 1948 he sailed for Europe, visiting France, Italy, and Greece. In Paris he met many of the renowned modernists including Picasso, Brancusi and Giacometti. Always sensitive to the particularities of light, mood, and colour of specific locales, Stamos's paintings are indexes of his responses to different places. Later in his career, he devoted several series of paintings to sites including Jerusalem, Delphi, and Lefkada, an island in the Ionian Sea
and birthplace of his father. These later works continue the early flattening of space and simplification of form evident in Three Kings.




¹ Theodoros Stamos, "Artists Statement," Tiger's Eye (1947), quoted in Lisa M. Messinger, "Twentieth Century Art," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Autumn, 1991), 63.
²Barnett Newman, "Introduction," The Ideographic Picture (New York: Betty Parsons Gallery, 1947), 1.
³ Barnett Newman, Stamos (New York: Betty Parsons Gallery, 1947) in Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews, ed. John O'Neill (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).