Alexander Iolas, Ex-Dancer And Surrealist-Art Champion

By JOHN RUSSELL

Published: Friday, June 12, 1987

Alexander Iolas, known internationally first as a ballet dancer and later as a leading art dealer who specialized in the Surrealists, died on Monday at New York Hospital. He was 80 years old.

Known primarily for his championship of the major European Surrealists - Max Ernst and Rene Magritte, above all - Mr. Iolas helped to form more than one important collection, in the United States and in Europe. In particular, Mr. and Mrs. John de Menil bought extensively from him, with results that caused general admiration when the Menil Collection was put on permanent public view in Houston last week.

Matta, Victor Brauner, Joseph Cornell, Yves Klein and Niki de Saint-Phalle were among the artists whom Mr. Iolas championed from the 1940s onward in his galleries in New York, Paris, Milan and Geneva. In promoting work that initially found few to favor it, he was able to reassure the potential client by his hierophantic manner, his often sensational mode of dress and his mischievous and sometimes irresistible charm. Played Piano in Berlin

Alexander Iolas was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on March 25, 1907, Andreas and Persephone Coutsoudis, who were Greek. In 1924, he went to Berlin as a pianist, and later became a ballet dancer who toured extensively with the Theodora Roosevelt Company and later with the company formed by the Marquis de Cuevas. In the 1960s, above all, his gallery was one of the liveliest and most active in Paris. In later years, Iolas retired to Athens.

He is survived by his sister, Niki Stifel of Athens, and by two nieces, Sylvia de Cuevas of New York and Lina Nation of Athens.

A memorial service will be held on Sept. 17 at 11 a.m. in the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, 319 East 74th Street.

A version of this obituary appeared in print on Friday, June 12, 1987, on section D page 28 of the New York edition.