Post
by lescaret » September 17th, 2004, 8:22 am
Salud Cecil,
Terrific work, ami, a crafted geometric pane of mindscape, like a Joseph Cornell box on acid, or like the carefully configured (and Huge!) abstract paintings of that most interesting of American painters from the roaring 20s French Riviera Picasso/Fitzgerald/Hemingway/Villa America scene, Gerald Murphy.
Murphy, some of you all may know, took up painting in France, lived in extraordinary fashion with life-partner Sara on the French Riviera (Cap d’Antibes), made some 15 or 20 paintings (some of them since lost and some of them GIANT sized), hosted tremendous dinner parties, and, following the tragic death of his two sons, gave up painting, returned to the United States, and died in the 1960s.
Cribbed from the web:
"“It was a hot summer, but the air was dry, and it was cool in the evening, and the water was that wonderful jade-and amethyst colour,” wrote avant-garde American painter Gerald Murphy, describing the sleepy Cap d’Antibes in the 1920s. “We bathed there and sat in the sun, and decided that this was where we wanted to be.” Along with friends Pablo Picasso, Ferdinand Léger, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda, Murphy established the tiny La Garoupe beach as the unofficial headquarters for an international enclave of artists and writers who picnicked and swam together, swapping ideas under parasols over sherry."