?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
THEODOROS STAMOS Metaphor I.
Oil on board, circa 1948-1950. 506x402 mm; 19 7/8x15 3/4 inches. Ex-collection Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York; Wayne Miller, New York.
Stamos (1922-1997), born on Manhattan's Lower East Side to Greek immigrant parents, was one of the youngest of the New York school of Abstract Expressionist artists and friends with Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. He had his first solo exhibition at Betty Parsons' Wakefield Gallery and Bookshop in 1943 and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, purchased his painting Sounds in the Rock in 1946. Stamos was made executor of the Rothko estate when his friend committed suicide in 1970; though he and Marlborough Gallery, with whom Stamos colluded, were ultimately sued by Rothko's daughter for waste and fraud, found guilty and disgraced for underselling Rothko's works and collecting exorbitant commissions.
