Lefkada, in addition to the wonderful nature of the location and the endless sandy beaches, is also a cultural place. It is the birthplace or origin of great art personalities worldwide.
One of them who is honored until October 15 on the island is Theodoros Stamos, or better Theodoros Stamatelos.
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great artist, an exhibition of works from the “Infinity Field Lefkada” series is presented in the art galleries of Lefkada (in the hall named after him “Theodoros Stamos” and in the Municipal Gallery) with the assistance of the “Hellenic Diaspora” Foundation and the cooperation of the Spiritual Center of Lefkada. The exhibition will last until October 15 and is the biggest cultural event of autumn on the island.
Lefkada created for Stamos his refuge and he discovered the true light as a sensitive soul of an artist can experience. His paintings, bathed in the infinite blue of the Ionian Sea, the absolute orange of the sun, the sparkling yellow, the green with essential touches from the infinite color palette that nature and the sea cannot provide, highlight the majesty of the island, the infinite love of the artist about his birthplace.
Stamos was born in 1922 in New York from the Lefkadian Theodoros Stamatelos and a Spartan mother. He died in 1997 at Hatzikosta Hospital in Ioannina and was buried in Tsoukalades, the beautiful village of his origin in western Lefkada.
In his 75 years of life, he experienced art with all his soul, creating, according to the art historian Manos Stefanidis, a radically new plastic language, moving parallel and equal to huge names of contemporary art such as Rothko, Newman, Pollock, Baziotis.
He is an integral and important part of abstract expressionism and a member of the “Irascibles” who in the late 1940s rose up against the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s policy towards American painting of the 1940s and posed for Nina Lynn for a famous photograph in 1950. Elite of abstract expressionism, the artists who were members of the New York School were playfully referred to as ”The Irascibles” in a magazine article that included the eponymous photograph.
Lefkada for Stamos led to the refuge of the last decade of his life, here he found peace, inspiration, the meaning that light has when it meets the sea and the gray of the rocks.
Lefkada honors him and expects Lefkada residents and cities of the island to feel the experience of their own Lefkada.