Theo Stavropoulos

Theo Stavropoulos (1930–2007) was a Greek American painter.

Life and education Born in Athens in June 1930, Stavropoulos lived in Greece during the Axis occupation, during which his parents became imprisoned. He entered art school when he was thirteen, was a member of the Greek Resistance, and studied art with the surrealist painter Giorgos Gounaropoulos. and at Yale University with Josef Albers on a Yale University scholarship. where he worked for 25 years.

In 1980, the gallery that represented him closed. From then on, he showed his work only to family and friends, and so largely disappeared from public attention. The magazine commented in 1976 that some of his work were "purposely ambiguous. One could not tell whether he was representing real figures of carvings in stone.", while newer works were "more abstract; one could hardly recognize any of the objects except that they were lights." In 1978, it said he was "creating a kind of pictorial hybrid which seems to hover between the abstract and the real."

Art critic Amei Wallach wrote in 2013 that Stavropoulos tested "the borders between reality and the dream".