Βιογραφία

Constantine Abanavas’s biography traces a steady line between two places that defined him: Lemnos, the Aegean island of his family, and New York City, where he spent his adulthood. In mid century Manhattan he moved within a small circle of Greek American artists—often associated with figures like Theo Hios and Louis “Lou” Trakis—while developing an idiom grounded in memory, ritual, and everyday life.
Born on January 10, 1922 in New Jersey, Abanavas spent formative years on Lemnos before returning to the United States in 1938. He studied at the American Artists School and the Art Students League, served in the U.S. Navy through 1943, and held a first solo exhibition in 1946 featuring works made during service—early markers of a pragmatic, workmanlike approach to art. His practice centered on oil painting and extended to mosaics and small sculpture in copper and plastic, a resourceful material vocabulary he maintained throughout his career.
In New York’s postwar gallery ecology, Abanavas surfaced at Contemporary Arts (106 E. 57th St.). The Frick Collection Archives preserve the file for his exhibition “A Cycle of Religious Paintings” (March 8–27, 1948), with photographs and the printed checklist—evidence of a painter attentive to processions, devotion, and communal pageantry at a moment when abstraction was ascendant. Period listings in The Art Digest likewise note, “Contemporary Arts (106E57) Jan.: Alvin Sella; Constantine Abanavas,” situating him among emerging names of the time.
Across ensuing decades, Abanavas’s images drew on what he knew intimately—fishermen, dancers, street festivals, and religious ritual—composed in shallow, stage like spaces with a sober palette. Late in life he relocated to SoHo, then still a working artists’ district, where he built a live work loft and continued to make art without fanfare. He died in New York on July 20, 2008, remembered in obituary notices as an “accomplished artist and philosopher” of SoHo and Lemnos, and survived by his wife Shirley, sons Nicholas and Gregory, and four grandchildren.
Institutional and market traces anchor the record. On Lemnos, Pinakothiki Kondiás documents that the National Gallery of Greece accepted eight of his prints in 1984, and provides a concise Greek language biography that corroborates his training, service, and 1946 debut. In the secondary market, a canvas titled “Cat in Window,” signed “C. E. Abanavas” and dated “1939,” has appeared at auction, attesting to the early start of his practice and the continuity of his hand.
Posthumously, the first dedicated survey—“Where Islands Converge: A Journey from Lemnos to Manhattan”—was presented at Homme Gallery, Washington, DC (Feb. 2–11, 2024), curated by his grandson Chris Abanavas. Spanning 1945–2008, it framed the artist through the dualities that long defined him: rural/urban, traditional/modern, religious/secular. Taken together, these strands—training and service, an early religious cycle, decades of painting, a SoHo studio, and a family led retrospective—describe a Greek American artist who neither chased movements nor withdrew from the world, but quietly carried two homelands on one canvas.

Sources
1. Family exhibition site — “Where Islands Converge: A Journey from Lemnos to Manhattan” (short bio, themes, circle with Hios & Trakis, SoHo years).
https://www.abanavas.com/
2. Pinakothiki Kondiás (Kondiás Gallery of Contemporary Balkan Art) — artist profile in Greek (training, Navy service, 1946 first solo, 1984 donation, death).
https://www.pinakothikikondia.gr/en/arts/item/13-photos-of-art-work-from-balkan-artists?print=1&tmpl=component
(see also artist list: https://www.pinakothikikondia.gr/el/arts)
3. Frick Collection Archives — A Cycle of Religious Paintings by Constantine Abanavas, Contemporary Arts, New York (Mar 8–27, 1948).
https://archives.frick.org/repositories/3/archival_objects/12102
4. Gallery listings — The Art Digest, Vol. 22, No. 8 (Jan 15, 1948): “Contemporary Arts (106E57) Jan.: Alvin Sella; Constantine Abanavas.”
https://archive.org/stream/sim_arts-magazine_1948-01-15_22_8/sim_arts-magazine_1948-01-15_22_8_djvu.txt
5. Obituary — Newsday/Legacy: “ABANAVAS — Constantine, 86, July 20… Accomplished Artist and Philosopher of Soho, NY and Lemnos, Greece.”
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/newsday/name/constantine-abanavas-obituary?id=5137528
6. Retrospective announcement — Greek News USA (Jan 22, 2024).
https://www.greeknewsusa.com/homme-gallery-in-washington-dc-unveils-retrospective-exhibition-where-islands-converge-a-journey-from-lemnos-to-manhattan/
7. Event listing — BmoreArt (Homme Gallery, Feb 2–11, 2024; curated by Chris Abanavas).
https://bmoreart.com/event/where-islands-converge-a-journey-from-lemnos-to-manhattan
8. Artist file index — Smithsonian Libraries, Art & Artist Files (AA/PG Library): “Abanavas, Constantine.”
https://www.sil.si.edu/DigitalCollections/art-design/artandartistfiles/vf_details.cfm?id=103868