The father of Theodore (Feodor) Stravinsky was the famous Russian composer, pianist and conductor Igor Stravinsky, his mother Ekaterina née Nosenko the daughter of a wealthy landed gentry. Theodore was the eldest son of the family. When the First World War began, his family moved to neutral Switzerland, where they first lived in the house of a good friend, the mathematics professor and conductor Ernest Ansermet, until they were able to move into their own house in Morges near Lausanne. Here the young Stravinsky began to study painting. One of his teachers was the Swiss painter and restorer Alexandre Cingria, who became famous above all for his work with stained glass windows. Theodore Stravinsky had his first exhibition in Paris at the age of only 20 years in the Galerie aux Quatre Chemins. Afterwards he stayed in the city on the Seine for 2 years and studied painting at the Académie André Lhote in Montparnasse. There, in 1934, he was introduced to a young woman who fascinated him from the first moment. Her name was Denise Guerzonj and she came from Geneva. Two years later the two married in Paris and lived there until 1940. Igor Stravinsky had applied for French citizenship for the whole family because of the Russian Revolution, but Theodore did not receive it but lived as a stateless person. Nevertheless, during the mobilization in France in 1939 Stravinsky joined the French Army and fought at Le Mans. There he was captured and taken to an extradition camp of the German occupying forces. With the help of influential friends he was able to leave for Switzerland in 1943 for health reasons. He then lived in Geneva with his wife until his death in 1989.

Theodore Stravinsky was a portrait painter and had many commissioned works in Switzerland, Italy, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. But he was also a landscape painter, still life painter and nude painter. He also created mosaics, frescoes and designed stained glass windows, such as the windows of the Church of Christ the King in Fribourg. His work is very extensive and varied. At the age of 87, the artist went blind and therefore could not paint during the last two years of his life. When he died, he received his last resting place at the Russian cemetery Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois near Paris.