Oleg Stavrowsky, the illustrator turned artist who lit up the Western world with his contemporary designs and modernist interpretations of the Southwest, died on May 15, 2020. He was 93 years old, and painting until the very end. Oleg Stavrowsky (1927-2020), Cow Catchers, oil on canvas, 50 x 34"

“He was a good friend, and I always admired him for his authenticity,” says painter Rocky Hawkins, whose career overlapped Stavrowsky’s in Washington and Santa Fe, New Mexico. “He painted genuine paintings in that remarkable style of his. He used a lot of texture and color, and the resulting work was very vibrant. We shared an admiration for abstract expressionism, and you could see his love for that movement in his work. He liked the West, but he also took risks and went beyond the norm.”Oleg Stavrowsky with his purple Lamborghini Diablo in the 1990s. The artist was a fan of exotic cars and had three Lamborghinis.

Born in 1927 in Harlem, New York City, to Russian émigré parents, Stavrowsky joined the military at the end of World War II. While stationed in Oklahoma he met and married Georgia Carol, “the love of his life [and] greatest inspiration and support of his artistic career,” an obituary for the artist states. After he was honorably discharged from the military, the self-taught artist began a successful career in illustration. But after a visit to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Stavrowsky turned his attention to the West. Many years later, he told a biographer, “Western art is my life, my joy, my income, my everything.”Oleg Stavrowsky (1927-2020), Barlow Sanderson Double Header through Raton Pass, oil on canvas, 30 x 68"

A large portion of his career was spent in Santa Fe, where his work was highly collectible. Artist Vic Payne, who in the early 1990s owned Mountain Trails Galleries in Santa Fe, remembers wanting Stavrowsky’s work in his gallery near the Santa Fe Plaza and was delighted when the artist came into the gallery with a proposition. “There was a mad scramble to get Oleg’s work in Santa Fe, so I was thrilled when he came into the gallery with this wild plan,” Payne recalls. “He wanted me to buy him a Lamborghini Diablo, and in return he would give me one 36-by-48-inch painting to sell every month for three or four years. At the time we were across from the La Fonda [hotel], and those things would hang on the wall for a week or less. It was the best art deal I ever made.”

Payne adds that Stavrowsky was a great artist and was a loving family man, who frequently was working out painting deals to help family members and friends. “He was always doing things for those he cared about,” he says, “and when it came to art, with his color and composition, he stood alone.”The artist in his studio. Photo courtesy Lesa Delisi.

Stavrowsky’s daughter, Lesa Delisi, one of eight children, has fond memories with her father and his love of exotic cars, including the purple Lamborghini Diablo, which stood out in Santa Fe. “He loved that car…and it was one of three Lamborghinis he had. He loved cars and loved surprising his kids with them. He’d do something silly like drop you off in a parking lot full of cars, give you a set of keys and tell you to find your car,” Delisi says, adding that her father kept painting into his 90s, but his work slowed dramatically after the passing of his wife, who encouraged his work. “They had been married almost 67 years when mom died in 2015. Madly in love, those two.”

The artist leaves behind eight children (including three artists), 14 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. His children wrote in his obituary, “We’re like a group of planets that have lost their star.” —

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