Theodore Wildanger was born in 1905 in Aumetz, France, the youngest son in a family of thirteen children. His father, an understandably impoverished iron miner, was hard put to feed so many mouths, and so required his children to help earn their keep.
Théo's first job was in the iron mines, pushing a tram, a job that cost him two fingers, and retired him to a job as a cowherd for a farmer in Aumetz. His pay in that latter job, whatever food the farmer could spare.
During WWI Théo supplemented his diet, whenever possible, by acquiring food, by art, from soldiers in the neighborhood of Aumetz. Stories around the dinner table in later years clearly indicated that he preferred the rations carried by American soldiers, and gave them his custom whenever possible.
As a young man, Théo met, and fell in love with Anne-Marie Thekes, the youngest daughter in a family of Luxembourgish wine growers. As the family of Anne Marie opposed this union, they eloped to Paris.
During the next seven years, described by Théo as the happiest of his life, he worked in an art gallery owned by an Italian count, and Anna became personal assistant to the count's wife. This job exposed him to the inner circles of the art world of Paris at that time, nourished his hunger to learn all he could about art and antiques and fired in him the ambition to become an artist in his own right.
The approach of World War II forced the young couple to return to Luxembourg where they concentrated on raising a family of three children and operating a small shop. But the passage of WWII back and forth several times across their country left them little with which to start over by war's end.
Théo subordinated his own ambitions to become an artist, concentrating instead on his elder son, Mathis. Somehow managing to get Mathis into major art academies, Théo obviously did his job very well. Mathis Wildanger is today one of Luxembourg's most successful painters, and a former winner of the "Medaille Officielle de la Ville de Paris".
Following the death of his adored Anna, and the successful launching of his son's career, Théo moved to Brussels, opened a small antique shop near the Grand'Place, and began to paint. Among his friends there, the painter Rene Magritte (whose influence may be seen in some of Théo's work) and the poet/singer Jacques Brel (whose black moods often appear there too). Although Théo studied the work of dozens of artists of his own, and earlier generations, the style he developed is purely his own.
In the mid-sixties, Théo's daughter persuaded him to come to America to live with her. Here, his only duty was to keep a watchful eye on his precious grand-daughter, Caroline. He accepted this responsibility with great relish, as it still permitted him a lot of time to paint.