Gregory Kondos

A resident of Sacramento, California where he has a studio adjacent to his home, Kondos is known for bold, modernist landscape paintings—brightly lit canvases with big cobalt-blue skies, large areas of solid color, flowing rhythm, and simple design.  His work is intended to suggest lonely, solitary aspects of the land.

He was born to Greek immigrant parents in Lynn, Massachusetts, and moved with his family to Sacramento, California in 1927.  His parents encouraged his early art talent, and by 1941, he was attending Sacramento Junior College to study art, but was interrupted by three years on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

He later completed his degree, spent a year at the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles and then went to California State University in Sacramento, intending to teach college, which he did at Sacramento Junior College for 27 years.  He retired in 1982, and to honor him, students and faculty named the campus art gallery, which he founded, in his honor.

Some of his early landscapes were influenced by Willem de Kooning and other abstract expressionists, but Wayne Thiebaud, California pop artist and realist, influenced him towards the work that became his hallmark.  Much of his subject matter comes from his travels to Europe including Greece, Yosemite National Park where he especially loves to paint, and from the Southwest, where he has a home in Santa Fe.

In 1995, he was elected to the National Academy of Design in New York, and in 1998, he completed a 570 foot long scene of the Sacramento River in colored and etched glass for the front of the new terminal at the Sacramento International Airport.


Source:
Donald J. Hagerty, Leading the West, pp. 37-38

Source: www.askart.com