May 11, 2017 - Sale 2447

Sale 2447 - Lot 51

Price Realized: $ 1,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
THEO HIOS
Composition.

Oil on canvas, circa 1965. 407x305 mm; 16x12 inches. Signed in oil, verso.

Hios (1908-1999) was born in Greece and emigrated to the United States in 1929. In 1934, he enrolled in a Federal Art Project, WPA, art class, which led to his first public showing as an artist in 1936. Hios enlisted in the Marine Corps during World War II and, after the war, studied at the Art Students League, New York, with Morris Kantor and Vaclav Vytlacil. He had his first solo exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Gallery, New York, in 1947. For much of his mature career, from the mid-1950s onward, Hios abandoned the realism of his first artistic decades for an abstract, geometric style marked by flat patches of bright colors.