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Theodoros Stamos (1922-1997) Untitled, c. 1960s
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Details
Signed in Greek letters ‘Σταμος’ (lower right).
Sizes:
Artwork: 146 × 109 cm | 57.5 × 42.9 in
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.
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 Report
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.
Shipping
Packed as size — · 146 × 109 cm
One side of this work is over 100 cm, so the packing and transport are quoted individually. and we will answer within two working days.
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Authenticity & Buyer Information
This lot is catalogued under the artist’s name without qualification. Provenance, dating and condition are described to the best of our knowledge; the sale is governed by our Conditions of Sale.
Buyers should review the catalogue carefully and raise any questions before bidding; additional information is not ordinarily provided after the auction.
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Market context
Titled and dated canvases from Stamos's High Snow–Low Sun series, with exhibition history, have sold for about 200,000–240,000 USD including premium; smaller works on board from the 1940s sell for about 28,000 USD. This canvas is untitled, undated and not inscribed on the reverse, and the estimate reflects that.
| Date | Sale | Work | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 March 2022 | Sotheby's, New York | High Snow–Low Sun No. 3, oil on canvas, 144.1 x 148.9 cm | 239,400 USD with premium (estimate 180,000–250,000) |
| 2022 | Phillips, New York | Greek Easter, 1947, oil on Masonite, 50.8 x 61 cm | 27,720 USD with premium (estimate 20,000–30,000) |
Prices as published by the selling houses, including their buyer’s premium, in the currency of the sale. Estimate for this lot: €20,000–30,000.
What it costs
Bidding on this site, the buyer’s premium is 25%, Spanish IVA included. There is no VAT on the hammer price and no card fee.
| Starting price | Low estimate | High estimate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hammer price | €10,000 | €20,000 | €30,000 |
| Buyer’s premium 25% (IVA included) | €2,500 | €5,000 | €7,500 |
| Total on auroraathena.com | €12,500 | €25,000 | €37,500 |
| Total through a bidding platform (30%) | €13,000 | €26,000 | €39,000 |
Through LiveAuctioneers, Invaluable, Drouot or Bidspirit the premium is 30%: the same hammer of €30,000 costs €39,000 there against €37,500 here. Shipping and insurance are quoted separately; the estimator below gives the figure for your country. Buyers outside the EU pay no Spanish tax on the lot; the destination’s import rules apply (United States: original paintings and drawings enter duty-free; United Kingdom: 5% import VAT on art). Card payments are accepted up to €10,000; larger amounts by bank transfer.
Questions about this lot
How does the estimate compare with the artist’s recent auction results?
Titled and dated canvases from Stamos's High Snow–Low Sun series, with exhibition history, have sold for about 200,000–240,000 USD including premium; smaller works on board from the 1940s sell for about 28,000 USD. This canvas is untitled, undated and not inscribed on the reverse, and the estimate reflects that.
The results we compared are listed under “Market context” on this page, each with its source, so you can check them.
What will this lot cost in total?
Bidding on this site, the buyer’s premium is 25%, Spanish IVA included, and there is no VAT on the hammer price and no card fee: at the starting price of €10,000 the total is €12,500; at the low estimate of €20,000 the total is €25,000; at the high estimate of €30,000 the total is €37,500.
Through LiveAuctioneers, Invaluable, Drouot or Bidspirit the premium is 30%, so the same hammer of €30,000 costs €39,000 there. Shipping and insurance are quoted separately; the estimator on this page gives the figure for your country. Buyers outside the EU pay no Spanish tax on the lot; the destination’s import rules apply (United States: original paintings and drawings enter duty-free; United Kingdom: 5% import VAT on art). Card payments are accepted up to €10,000; larger amounts by bank transfer.
How is this lot catalogued?
Under the artist’s name without qualification. Provenance, dating, condition and value are described to the best of our knowledge; the sale is governed by the Conditions of Sale.
Can I see the condition report, more photographs or the work itself?
A condition report with ultraviolet photographs is prepared on request, normally within two working days; the condition summary on this page is examined in-house and is not a conservator’s report. Further photographs of any detail, the reverse or the frame are sent on request. The work can be examined in our Barcelona showroom by appointment before the sale, and you are welcome to send your own conservator or specialist.
How does bidding work, and can a maximum bid make me overpay?
You can leave a maximum bid before the sale (the sale is on Saturday, November 28th - 17:00 (CET)) or bid live in our online room. A maximum bid is executed by the auctioneer only as much as is needed to stay ahead of other bidders, in the sale’s increments, never above your maximum.
Where a reserve exists it never exceeds the low estimate; a lot without a reserve sells to the highest bid at or above the starting price of €10,000.
Is there a limit on how much I can bid?
Every account is approved for bidding as soon as the e-mail address is confirmed, with a limit of €5,000 per bid until the identity is verified. The limit applies everywhere: in the live room, on the lot page and to maximum bids. To bid without a limit, verify your identity in your account on this site: it takes about three minutes on a phone, is done once, and the limit is lifted automatically as soon as the check is complete. Please do it at least an hour before the sale.
Theodoros Stamos
Theodoros Stamos was born on the Lower East Side of New York on the last day of 1922, the son of Greek immigrants; his mother came from Sparta and his father had grown up on the island of Lefkada. As a teenager he won a scholarship to the American Artists School, where he studied sculpture and found a mentor in the painter Joseph Solman. He was twenty when Betty Parsons gave him his first solo exhibition at the Wakefield Gallery in 1943, and he showed with her until 1957. The Museum of Modern Art bought his ‘Sounds in the Rock’ in 1946, and he exhibited in the Whitney annuals from 1945.
The youngest painter of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists, Stamos was one of the eighteen ‘Irascibles’ who protested against the Metropolitan Museum in 1950 and were photographed together for Life. His early paintings draw on shells, stones and fossils; around 1950 came the calligraphic Tea House pictures, and at the end of the decade the luminous, emptied fields of High Snow–Low Sun.
The Sun-Box paintings followed from 1962, and after 1971 the long series of Infinity Fields, many of them named for Lefkada, where he spent part of each year from 1970. He taught at Black Mountain College from 1950 to 1954 and for twenty years at the Art Students League of New York.
A close friend of Mark Rothko, Stamos was named an executor of his estate; the litigation that followed Rothko’s death in 1970 cost him his house and for many years overshadowed his reputation and his market. He died in Ioannina in February 1997 and is buried on Lefkada. A year before his death he gave forty-three works to the National Gallery in Athens. His paintings are in the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
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