San Francisco, CA- With his elegant compositions and intuitive, vibrant color palette, Sacramento native Gregory Kondos has earned a reputation as one of California’s foremost landscape painters. From his interpretations of the state’s endlessly varied coastline to his visions of Yosemite, where he has often been artist-in-residence, he has created remarkable images of the state’s multifaceted beauty. Born to Greek immigrant parents, Kondos has also painted extensively in his ancestral homeland and throughout Europe, as well as elsewhere in the U.S., particularly in the deserts near Santa Fe. Across his diverse subjects, the constant is a finely tuned sensitivity to the character of the land, and a singular ability to render scenes that reverberate in our imagination.
Working in the tradition of the California Plein-Air painting movement, Kondos marries sublime American landscape painting with a looser, more modern, particularly West-Coast sensibility; his improvisational palette, shot through with electric bursts of bright color, and his bold, fluid compositions have nearly musical rhythms. Like those of Wayne Thiebaud, his longtime friend, Kondos’s paintings can exude a sense of play, and seem infused with the benevolent quality of California (or Mediterranean) light. Yet a meditative tone, too, runs through his work; his distilled landscapes often frame a solitary element—a hay bale, a mountain peak, a lone house on a rocky outcropping—that acts a focal point and projects serenity. “Less is more,” as Kondos has said of his work, and, as in Zen painting, what is left out makes the picture more resonant.
Born in 1923, Kondos taught at Sacramento City College for nearly thirty years, and founded and directed its campus gallery, which now bears his name. Over his long career, his work has been placed in numerous private and institutional collections, including the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., the Shanghai Art Museum, the Phoenix Art Museum, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Recently, he was elected to the National Academy of Design in New York.
Gregory Kondos – Recent Paintings, September 2012 – Caldwell Snyder Gallery, 341 Sutter Street, San Francisco, CA. Artist Reception September 22nd, For more information, high- resolution images, or an artist press kit, please contact Christina Maybaum, at: christina@caldwellsnyder.com or call (415) 392-2299 | www.caldwellsnyder.com