Steven Trefonides was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1926. He studied at The Swain School of Design in New Bedford and after serving in the Air Force from 1944 through 1945 he continued his studies at the Vesper George School of Art and The Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston.

In the late 1960s Trefonides was one of a group of Boston artists who founded the Studio Art Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where he taught painting and founded the University’s art gallery.

Trefonides traveled through much of Western Europe to see the world’s great museums. Among his many awards he was the recipient of a Camargo Foundation fellowship in 1984, and spent that fall working in Cassis, France. He is the author of India, (Grossman-Viking, 1969), a volume of photographs produced while on a Fulbright grant in India to study the Ajanta cave frescos.

Trefonides’ work is part of many permanent collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Boston Public Library and The De Cordova Museum of Art, Lincoln, Mass. His work is also in the collections of numerous private and public universities.

Trefonides died August 30th, 2021 at the age of 94.

Steven Trefonides obituary in The Boston Globe.

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