3/16/2023 0 Comments Shimo center for the artsThiebaud and Kondos were among the group of Sacramento artists who, in 1958, founded Sacramento’s first private art gallery, Artists Cooperative Gallery, which later became Artists Contemporary Gallery. Both went on to teach at the junior college and, in 1960, Thiebaud became an assistant professor at UC Davis. While at Sac State, Kondos studied art alongside the now world-renowned painter Wayne Thiebaud, and the two became lifelong friends. By the time he completed his master’s degree in art in 1957, Sacramento State was a decade old and fully settled at its permanent site on J Street. Kondos was a student at Sacramento State College when the school was in its infancy and holding classes in rented quarters at Sacramento Junior (now City) College on Freeport Boulevard. He looked at me and said, ‘Go for it.’ Those words made me who I am today.” I said, ‘Dad, I want to be an artist.’ I knew he wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer or a pharmacist. “He said, ‘What are you going to do now?’ ‘I’m going to go to school,’ I said. “My father greeted me at the bus station,” he recalls. Kondos grew up in Sacramento from about age 3, when his parents moved the family from Massachusetts, and he served four years in the Navy during World War II before returning to his hometown for good. “Gregory Kondos has touched our hearts through his art.” “There are special days, days that matter, and those days are very often when we honor someone who does things we never dreamed could be done. Nelsen told Kondos during a pre-Commencement reception at the Julia Morgan House. “You are one of the greatest painters of all time, a man I admire,” Sacramento State President Robert S. It’s draped across a bucket of walking sticks at the front door. His doctoral hood has a place of honor in the townhouse he shares with his wife, Moni Van Camp Kondos. “What Sac State did for me was that it opened the door to those who made art: the faculty and other students. The honor came nearly six decades after Kondos earned his master’s degree – and 65 years since completing his bachelor’s-level studies – from then-Sacramento State College. He was one of the first homegrown celebrities to get a star on the Sacramento Walk of Stars and was inducted during an Aug. 31 gala at Memorial Auditorium.Īnd he received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts degree from Sac State and the California State University (CSU) Board of Trustees during the Spring 2016 Commencement. Kondos is known throughout the world and is a legend locally, as well. The Crocker Art Museum honored him with a solo retrospective, “A Touch of Blue: Landscapes by Gregory Kondos,” to celebrate his 90 th birthday in 2013.Īmong his honors was a lifetime achievement award from the Florence Biennale in Italy and election to the prestigious National Academy in New York City. He had a museum show in Shanghai when he was 87. His oil-on-canvas “River Life” is on display at Sac State’s Leslie and Anita Harper Alumni Center. (View photo of “Lady Liberty” exhibit.)Īmong his permanent public art installations are the 510-foot-long glass mural “River’s Edge” and the 12-foot-tall oil painting “Sutter’s Gold,” both at Sacramento International Airport. And he has loaned his just-completed oil painting “Lady Liberty” to Sac State. Locally, his work will be a part of group exhibitions at Sacramento State’s Robert Else Gallery, the Shimo Center for the Arts, and his namesake Kondos Gallery at Sacramento City College. This fall, he’ll have paintings at the Sutter County Memorial Museum in Yuba City (celebrating the National Park Service’s 100 th anniversary) and at the Caldwell Snyder Gallery in San Francisco. His work is still in demand by private collectors, and he continues to produce commissions and exhibit his artwork. Kondos is one of Northern California’s most renowned and beloved landscape painters. “I’m the boss of the blues,” he says with a chuckle. And when he paints, almost always there is a touch of blue – his signature color. Every painting begins with a charcoal sketch made from memory or a treasured photograph. He paints the landscape of his favorite locales: Yosemite, the American Southwest, the Delta, France, and Greece, his parents’ homeland. Legendary painter Gregory Kondos at work in his downtown Sacramento studio.
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