Though Theo Stavropoulos was an accomplished painter and draftsman, his professional reputation faded during his lifetime. After the New York City gallery that represented him closed in 1980, Stavropoulos spent his last decades making artworks in private, his studio only open to family and friends. Offerings of Light, a survey exhibition at Lehman College Art Gallery, presents a first-rate body of work by an artist who today is largely unknown.

Stavropoulos (1930-2007) came of age during the brutal occupation of Greece by the Axis powers. The Nazis imprisoned his parents and, as famine ravaged his country, Stavropoulos joined the Greek Resistance.

It was during this difficult period that Stavropoulos studied painting with Surrealist artist Giorgos Gounaropoulos. Writing in the exhibition catalog, Amei Wallach says his early exposure to Surrealism allowed Stavropoulos to test “the borders between reality and the dream,” a characteristic evident in the fifty years of artwork represented here.

After the war Stavropoulos moved to Paris where he studied with Léger before attending Yale’s Master of Fine Arts program, then headed by artist and color-theorist Josef Albers. The artworks in this exhibition reflect the influences of both teachers; some of the canvases here feature softly modeled abstract forms reminiscent of Léger’s “machine art” pieces, except Stavropoulos’ palette is restrained, an economy of color informed by Albers, subtly tinted paintings that shimmer with silvery light.

Other works in this show feature ghostly figures made with wiggly strokes of iridescent lines and thin, barely tinted washes. In “Kore IV” a standing figure fills a vertical canvas. Though the image is hazy, the figure’s pose, with one foot forward, has the sure-handed elegance of a Tiepolo figure drawing.

A display case containing sketchbooks confirms the painter’s interest in Italian Rennaissance and Mannerist artwork. Dashed-off landscapes made during artistic pilgrimages to Italy, watercolors and pen drawings the size of postage stamps, capture the light and architecture of that country. Exhibition curator Pat Genova says Stavropoulos called these works “doodles,” obsessively filling pages with amusing caricatures, studies for paintings and transcriptions of costumed figures from Renaissance compositions.

According to Ms. Genova, Stavropoulos “never thought of being an artist as a career choice,” referring to his life’s work as “a vocation” and a “calling” and warning against “the seduction of fame.” These compelling artworks, pieces on loan from the painter’s surviving family, will soon go back into hiding. This opportunity to view works by a serious painter unknown even to many of his contemporaries is rare indeed.

Offerings of Light: Paintings and Studies 
by Theo Stavropoulos (1930 – 2007), on view through September 26, 2013 at Lehman College 
Art Gallery, 250 Bedford Park 
Boulevard West 
Bronx, N.Y. 718-960-8731

More information about Xico Greenwald’s work can be found at xicogreenwald.com