Hios Theo

Theodoros Chios studied painting in New York during the 1930s, after having studied Law at the University of Athens for two years. In 1942-1945, he served as a photographer and painter in the United States Marine Corps. In the late 1930s, he appears to have been working as a children’s book illustrator under Works Progress Administration (WPA), the U.S. federal programme for support of artists during the Depression. Chios also worked as an art teacher. His earliest works demonstrate the artist’s interest in the repercussions of Cubism, manifested in the way in which he used drawing in his otherwise naturalistic works. As was natural for an artist who lived in the U.S., he became familiar with the prevailing language of Abstract Expressionism, to the extent at least that he could grasp them. Thus, he had an abstract approach to the landscape in his visit to Greece in the early 1950s. During the following twenty years, he transformed his subjects into geometrical shapes invested with vibrant colours. In the late 1970s, he made a series of portraits inspired by Byzantine iconography, whereas in the following years he returned to figurative painting, in which typical, touristy versions of the Greek landscape prevailed (obviously dictated by the commercial demand for his work in the U.S.). Theodoros Chios had solo exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in art galleries mostly in New York but also in other U.S. cities. In 1989, he had a solo exhibition at the Koumantareios Art Gallery in his native Sparta, in the Peloponnese.