Gregory Kondos has spent decades depicting California’s unique, majestic beauty, from its rolling farmland to its varied coastline, to the forests and peaks of Yosemite, where he has often served as artist-in-residence. He has been drawn as well to the deserts around Santa Fe, and to Europe, especially Greece. Now in his nineties, he is celebrated as one of the world’s foremost landscape painters, known for his light-filled palette and intuitive, organic forms that seem like effortless extensions of nature.
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 light. Hhis simplicity of theme reflected in his technique allows us to place ourselves within the space and composition of the painting.
Recognized as one of the world’s most prominent California landscape artists, Gregory Kondos has won numerous prizes, including a lifetime achievement award from International Bienniale in Florence, Italy, and has been elected to the National Academy of Design in New York. Collections of Kondos’ work are displayed in museums around the world, including the Shanghai Art Museum in China, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Yosemite Museum, where he has been a member of the Artist-in-Residence Program since 1989. Among his solo exhibitions is a recent retrospective at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento.
Caldwell Snyder Gallery will host an opening reception with new work by Gregory Kondos in “Celebrating 95 Years” on Saturday, April 7th, from 2 to 4 p.m. Kondos and fellow artist, Melissa Chandon, will be giving an artist talk. Exhibition continues through May 5th.
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