Amrita Sher-Gil—The European Connection

Amrita Sher-Gil—The European connection

This talk was proposed in a very sponteanous manner when Geza, who had been asking me to do an exhibition, said that he was leaving shortly.

As with the Sher-Gil archive exhibition held here some years ago, the approach would be using archival material, go through the biography and finally suggest some other ways of looking at the subject. The talk was to be mainly spoken, interlaced with quotations. Now there will be telegraphic information in place of the verbal. In other words an a hugely incomplete presentation, compensated by a large number of visuals. I hope you will bear with us.

1&2: Umrao Singh and his younger brother, Sunder Singh taken in 1889, most probably by Umrao Singh himself. Striking a pose, being unconventional, Umrao Singh looks out, while his brother places his bat firmly on the ground—the latter will be knighted, will start one of Asia’s largest sugar factory in Gorakhpur ( where Amrita will spend the last years of her life ). Umrao will use his camera with a personal passion and take self portraits for almost sixty years as well as photograph his new family. Umrao Singh went to London in 1896 for a year and would certainly have met Princess Bamba, the daughter of Raja Dalip Singh, and Grand daughter of Raja Ranjit Singh.

3& 4: In October 1910 she came to Lahore with a young Hungarian, who was her travelling companion. On new years eve Umrao Singh wrote in Marie Antionette dairy a poem of Kalidasa and a friend, an Urdu poet wrote in the same book on 15 January 1911, the following poem translated by Umrao Singh. 5 &6: Intoxicated by her grace and charms,

When she at random through the garden strays,,

From every bud this prayer issues forth:

May I be singled out by her, O God !

7 & 8: The poet was Mohammed Iqbal. Umrao Singh remained friend’s with the great poet till the end of his life. Umrao Singh married Marie Antionette in January. She became pregnant in May 1912.

9& 10; The couple arrived in Budapest in December 1912 and Amrita was born in Jan 30, in Buda on the banks of the Danube opposite the houses of Parlaiment. The Gottesmann/

Bakhtay family. The lady in black in the centre is Marie Antionette’s mother and the lady with white hair is her mother. A painting of her done by Amrita is in Jaipur House.

11 & 12. The family in 1916 moved to their village house on the outskirts of Budapest.

Amrtia and her sister, Indira only spoke Hungarian. The mother told them many

Hungarian folk tales. Amrita’s Christian name Maria Magdelena is given in her school leaving certificate.

13 & 14. The water colour’s are done at the age of seven and nine. Amrita made an enormous number of these idealyic paintings. 15 & 16: The family moved to Simla in 1921coming via Paris where they went to the

Louvre. In Simla they learnt English and French and the two girls acted in plays at the

Amateur Dramatic Society.

17 & 18. In the twenties two European men were to have very different kinds of an affect on Amrita. The first was an Italian Sculptor, Pasquinelli, who made realistic marble busts of the elite in Punjab. He fell in love with Marie Antionette, and soon proposed they go to

Florence for Amrita’s artistic education. The two girls and the mother went for two months. Amrita hated the experience, blamed her mother for using her.

19 7 20 : For the next three years the her drawings and water colours became intense, passionate and angry. The theme of Judith was often repeated.

21 & 22. Themes were often taken from European literature and films.

23 & 24: In 1927 her Hungarian uncle Ervin Baktay arrived in Shimla. Under the influence of Umrao Singh he had become an Indologist ( Geza has written a book on him ) . He had earlier been to study art under a well known Hungarian artist, Simon

Hollosy, in Munich. On the right Amrita is painting him many years later in Budapest.

Ervin made Amrita draw from life, and gradually laid the academic, realist basis of her art.

25 & 26: Beethoven and a self portrait. 27 & 28. In 1929 the whole family moved to Paris for Amrita’s art education.

29 & 30 Joseph Nemes an artist, also a student of Hollosy introduced Amrita to Pierre

Valliant, who took her into the Grand Chamiere. Gaicommetti had finished his studies there two years before. At Chopin’ s grave.

31 & 32. In 1930 Amrita was enrolled into the workshop of Lucian Simon- 1861-1945

33 & 34. Simon’s work The Procession- 1901- included in the Royal Academy exhibition on post impressioism in 1979. Subsequently he painted fashionable Parisian genre scenes in a fairly rich and bright pallete.

“One day I proclaimed that Siminon was a troglodyte. The name stuck to him.

Jean thought it might be time to leave the school. I had made up my mind when Siminon admitted an independent student, a young woman, from a far away Eastern country and whose arrival convinced me immediately that I still had a lot to do and learn amongst the

‘slaves of Bonaparte street’.

35 & 36 .The lines by Boris Taslitsky who stands behind Amrta, from his fictional autobigraphy called Tu Parles.. Ram Kumar met him in the early fifties in Paris. He asked him whether he had heard of Amrtia Sher Gil. Boris is still alive in Paris.

37 & 38. She was born in these far away countries where the crocodiles eat the pilgrims, the holy cows men'’ food, where princesses live on pearls. Her playmates had been young tigers, she’d learnt babbling while charming rattle snakes, had slept under the black panther’s wakeful eye.

39 & 40: She looked as if had come down the from stone fresco in order to eternalize on the banks of the River Seine the dramas and mysteries of Bramha.

41 & 42: My eyes sunk into her black ones, as in a velvety pool of authority, out of which

I escaped only to fall under the influence of her dark rosy lips.

43 & 44: The workshop welcomed her in petrified silence.It became quite different when she started painting and when the transposition of the model was born on her canvas.

: 45 & 46! It was fine, it was flesh, it was violence allied to tenderness, it was both rape and respect, it clashed and it flowed harmony and tearing it apart at the same time 47 & 48 :. It was neither classical, nor romantic, nor contemporary, something belonging neither to yesterday or today, it belonged to all epochs and to the present, a sort of present that anticipates the future.

49 & 50 I came near her and to uphold my courage, I addressed her with the words “

Hello Michelangelo” a greeting I wished to sound relaxed. She exclaimed, you like

Michelangelo, he’s my god

51 & 52: Ho! He’s just abore, her neighbour interrupted, he’s even a stupid fool. He blinked his eyes, absorbed for a minute in his own work and whispered “ Cezanne, the greatest painter in the world”. I like him too, she answered, I like him as the genius, like all geniuses, but above all I place Michelangelo and Beethoven.

53 & 54: Her neighbour watched her with an ironic smile. Make a little effort beauty, go as far as Gericault, and you will make hell of a couple, Igor and you. We’ll marry you and have hell of a good time. She looked at me in wonder. Gericault, really ? That’s amazing !

I like him very much, too.

55& 56: I tucked my hands into my pockets and asked with arrogance “ Never mind, what’s your name ? She picked up her brushes, mixed her colours, looked up again and quickely throwing her long black hair back, she said Is ‘tu’ used to address someone here ? Yes it was. Maybe we intended to change it ? She would have to get used to it.

Well, if such is the use… My name is Immortal… what is yours ? Immortal ! How did I never guess ? Of course Immortal. Triple imbicile, could she have any other name.

57 & 58 : BLANKS: I began raving. I bored Jean to death with various theories about the souls immortality, about the immortality of painting, of beauty.

Immortal said farewell to us by the end of the week. She was leaving for three months and going to Italy, Engalnd, ten other countries and Hungary. I abruptly became aware of the immensity of the world, I started to study geography with a globe.

59 & 60 : On leaving Le Bon Coin, in the Pantheon square, I met Immortal, back from her trip throughout Europe. She was with a little old man with a white beard and a large green turban round his forehead. He was wearing a supple, red leather shoulder strap, at the end of which was hanging a long umbrella. The sight of such a character would have amused me, had I met him alone and had not known he was Immortal’s father; I was bedazzeled and filled with the greatest respect for him. Immortals smile filled me with happiness.

61 & 62: Immortal back at the workshop occupied all my thoughts. I intently watched for her car, that she drove herself, quite an unusual thing at that time. She always had the best excuse in the world to justify her being late. Toscanini had dropped in without a warning to visit her mother who was once a famous opera singer. All those big names of high society about whom I could not give a damn. 63 & 64: With my mother she was perfect, kind, full of respect. Mummy liked her very much, but was worried. What are you aiming at my son. She was right sheperds do not marry princesses!

She was only a princesses when she was holding a palette. But what tells you I shall never become a king with my brush. Mum was making some tea. She took it through to us during our working sessions. We sat on the floor cushions mum liked to cover our bed with, and drank it.

65 & 66: How well I feel here Immortal said, how I feel at ease her. You cannot imagine,

Igor, how I wish I was poor. Don’t stare at me with your wild eyes, you will make me laugh.

Well then, what did I say ?

You speak about the poor, Immortal, you speak, but you’d better not say anything. You do not know what you are talking about. Even the sky belongs to you over there and here too, because , tell me who pays for you’re your sky, mummy or daddy or the untouchables.

67 & 68: She put her arms around my neck. Kiss me, Monsieur Saint-Just. Do you really want to chop of my head off ?

She’d brought her gramaphone, she left it with me all the time, with our favourite records: Beethoven, Mozart, Boccherini; we argued about Bhrams. I know you French are ridiculous, it was Romain Rolland who taught you to despise Bhrams. It is enough to that a man of genius cannot bear another one, and if he is a writer your taste subscribes to his. You make me sick, with your propensity to think only according to the printed word.

She was neither entirely right, nor wrong. It is true that Brahms bored me but it true that I got my arguments from ‘Jean Christophe’. I hated the idea she might be right. Whether or not she was a princesses, she belonged to me, didn’t she for Christ’s sake?

69 & 70 : I went in as one storms a place. I walked in the sort of unease which precedes panic. Immortals mum was beautiful, tall, her hair dyed red with the most violent henna, she had an opulent elegence in her superb figure, but she was European. She was gazing upon me with her sparkling, clear eyes, in the passionate light of her radiant face, with her low cut dress.

71 & 72 : ( Tolstoy on the right, whom Umrao Singh admired ) Immortals father’s face was beautiful and mild, the lower half hidden behind the big white beard, his nose straight and thin, his eyes seemed unreal, as if in a dream. His immense forehead had fine lines joining the eyes, making them longer still.

73 & 74 :He was small, thin strengthless, as if in the habit of remaining endlessly motionless in yogic meditation, had annihilated his body. If this one demands every year his weight in gold and diamonds, the tax must be bearable. He’s a walking spirit.

75 & 76: They announce the guests. Italian writers, German musicians, Hungarian singers, Excellencies from all over the world. I said to Immortal I have had enough of this. She said you stay here or I am not coming anymore. And also take a good look at those people whose heads you want to chop off, my darling little Robespierre. 77 & 78 : I think you are deceiving yourself, Igor. I think your head and your heart will never agree. Look at this portrait you’re doing of me. Is this a portrait of a lover. I have no face in this portrait, there is nothing but colour relationship, and not a good one at that, between the blue of the cape and the red of the mouth.

79 & 80 : But look at the portrait I made of you. It was an admirable painting, overflowing with rich hues. I despaired to be able to do as well even in twenty years time; and it wasn’t colours for colours sake, a simple decorative emotion, no, it was palpitating.

I compared this work with my miserable painting, took a big brush and splashed some white all over my portrait of Immortal.

81 & 82 : Well, you killed me, she said when she came back. You were right, Igor, it was bad; come today, if you want, we wont work, lets go for a walk along the quay, there you will tell me some stories, I like the stories you tell me.

Boris Taslitskys painting of 1947 called The Delegeates

83 & 84 : The Delegate, 1947. On the right is the title page from an article by Francis

Fracina, in a Yale University press publication She writes ‘Taslitzky’s Russian emegre father was killed in world war II, and he lived in a relative poverty with his working mother ( she was killed in a concentration camp V.S ). Friend with Francis Gruber, together they took part in the Front Populaire processions of 1934. Picasso and Leger joined the Communist Party of France in 1944 & 45 respectively. However the leading figures celebrated in the party were Taslitzky and Andre Fougeron. 85 & 86: The Charnel House, 1945 by Picasso and The little camp at Buchenwald by

Taslitzky. The Painting is 16 feet long.

87 & 88. Taslitzky “ The Seine was our great island. There we would spend hours engaged in painting or chatting. The quays were our real workshops. There we painted each others portaits in the open air.

89 & 90: There we exchanged ideas, about the way of conquering the world and of glory.

Rapheal, Rubens and their princely lives…., a timid attempt. We will show you what real life is.

91 & 92: One day Lenoble told me that he was painting from the top of one of the towers of Notre Dame. I came to meet him, arrived panting at the top of this devilish eighteen story circular staircase that I had been intent to climb up rapidly without stopping. The wind was strong enough to ‘blow the horns of an ox’.

93 & 94 : Still life and View from my Studio,

95 & 96: Series of Portraits. Spanish Girl and My Sister

97 & 98: My Great Grandmother and Klari, a first cousin 99 & 100: Seated Nude and Reclining Nude> The models are her cousin Viola and her sister

101 & 102: Late works in Paris 1934. Women in Brown and Women in Green

103 & 104: Professional Model and Self Portrait as Tahitain also done in 1934

105 & 106 : Women as companions; Young Girls

107 & 108; Denise Protoux ( also the model in Young Girls )

109 & 110 Women in Black . A portrait of Denise Proteaux. Possibly Amrita’s last and largest painting done in Paris. She must have cut it up, possibly because the composition did not work. A complex narrative is suggested.

Denise Proteaux in 1985 came across the poster of the exhibtion Indian Artists in France when she stopped short in her tracks in the Metro on seeing Amrita’s portrait. She wrote two article’s about the artist’s circle at the Ecole des Beaux Atres. In 1986 when I met her she embraced me like a long lost son. She said she had the painting of the Women in

Black, which she said the Fascits took away. Her other portraits survives at the NGMA.

111 &112: Portrait of Marie Louise and a painting by her. Amrita writes to Karl

Khandalawala : My studio is quite bare, a huge room with white washed walls and only a couple of Chinese paintings and the wotk of my friend, Marie Louise Chassany ) of whom I have spoken to you ( in whose pictures the sensitive strange charm of Picasso’s

1904-05 period and Soutine at his best is combined with an extraordinary fascination of its own ) to adorn it.

113 & 114: ASG ref to lesbian aspect

115 & 116 :The circle of artists with Amrita were a formidable lot. On researching for the film for Kumar Shahani on Amrtia in 1986 I was able to locate over a dozen of her colleagues. Georg Rohner is dancing with Amrita.

117 & 118 : Rohner on extreme right is still alive. Marie Louise in the centre. The

Drowned , 1939. A major figure of the group called ‘Forces Nouvelles’ 1935-1939. Their work was represented in a major retrospective in Paris in 1980. They were Georg Rohner,

Bob Humbolt , Henry Jannot, Jean Lasne, A. Pellan ( all from the Beaux Atrtes ) and Tal-

Coat.

119 & 110. Henri Jannot and Peirre Despierre . The Elements, 1937 by Despierre.

111 & 112: Henri Jannot. Women at Table, 1935 and Robert Humbolt “ Card Players

“1935

113 & 114 : Andre Hambourg. Women with shawl, 1933. He could still be alive. 115 & 116 Amrita in a Paris café. Jannot is next to Amrita Rohner behind and the gesticualting person is Francis Gruber. The most famous of the circle.

117 & 118 ; Gruber’s “ Young Girl in Terror, 1933 and The arrival of winter, 1935. In the

1980’s the Tate gallery gave him a posthomous retrospective.

119- Blank Gruber Job, 1944. Gruber was a very close friend of Giacometti from the late thirties. It is said that he had considerable influence in Giacommeti shift from surrealism to what he became known for.

121& 122: Amrita’s work is generally referred as being 30 years behind the times, that she was basically in the tradition of the Post impressionists. This is correct but there is more in the context.

Letter to Karl Khandalawala “ I also love Van Gogh. Do you know that picture of his, the cornfield with black crows ? It puts me into a state of violent emotion and divine restlessness. In spite of the fact that till now my special favourite has been Gaugain, I sometimes feel that Van Gogh was the greater of the two. The Elemental versus

Sophistication ( no matter how sublime ) is apt to make the latter look bit flat by comparison.

123 & 124: I wholly disagree with you about Soutine’s work bearing the slightest resemblenceto, or at all being influenced by Modigliani. Except for an occasional angulaity of form, his tormented, nervous, rhapsodical art has nothing in common with the other’s calm painting, where every brush stroke, every speck of colour, is an act of conscious violation.

125 & 126: The seminal show of Jean Clair in 1981 called The Realisms 1919-1939, puts into context many artists coonected with Amrtia.

Jean Faurtrier; Nude in Brothel, 1924, Balthus ‘The Street-1933;

127 & 128: Mario Sironi Nude with Mirror, 1923-24 ( was on the cover of the catalogue ) and Carlo Carla, Summer 1930

Magic Realism has been interpreted as part of the larger European phenomenon of a return to figurative painting, or to the ‘object’, in reaction against the excesses of the pre- war avant-grade. Yet as the word ‘magic’ suggests, and as it was intended by the German critic Franz Roh, who coined the term in 1925, this realism was anything but neutral or passive. ….Compositions with multiple, non-converging perspectives in a shallow space focus attention on the individual formation of each object, or what Roh termed the

‘moment of connection’.

Magic Realism was thus not the style of a return to order, but a visual metaphor of relativism.

129 & 130 Carlo Carra. Expectation, 1926 and The Pine Tree by the sea, 1921 The French critic Waldemar George encouraged a specific revival of the ‘Latin’ roots of

Italian art, in opposition to the ‘Nordic’ spirit that had contaminated French culture from the nineteenth century to Surrealism – a perspective that coincided with the myth of romantia promulgated by the Fascist regime.

131 & 132 : Massimo Campigli. Women with folded arms, 1924 and the Seamstress,

1925. Massimo Campigli. Lived in Paris 1919-1933. In the late twenties he traveled in

Rumania and began a new series of scenes of women engaged in domestic and agricultural activities. The figures are distributed in asymetrical, hieratic compositions and hovered on a roughly textured ground, inspired by ancient frescos.

Many of these works inspired Jamini Roy.

133 & 134- Twentieth Century Hungarian Art

Josef Rippel-Ronai, Cemetry on the Great Plain, 1894

Karoly Ferenczy-Evening in March-1902

135 & 136- Adolf Fenyes : Bean Shelling,1904 and Brother and Sister, 1906

137 & 138: Istvan Szonyi, Funeral at Zebegeny, 1928 and Elado a Borju, 1933

Amrita lived in Zebegeny and painted the main church, in 1930.

139 & 140: Udvaron, 1934 and Este, 1934 .I went to see an exhibition of the works of

Szonyi, Aba Novak and Ivanyi Grunevald. Of the latter I do not even speak. I was deeply disappointed in Szonyi, in his soft colourless style. I don’t know why his style though apparently nothing like it reminds me ( of Renoir whose “soft’ unenergetic style I loathe so much ).

141 & BLANK. I was amply repaid for my pains by the work of Aba Novak whose whole painting in spiteof the fact that he overwhelms his compoistion with figures and specially superfluous details ( though he paints them be beautufully ) which goes to the detriment of the “ keeping together “ of the composition as a whole, struck and charmed me by its fearlessness and real originality.

143 & 144: Suzanne Valadon’s The Blue Chamber, on the cover of a 1978 The Womens

Press Publication called Women Artists. A late 1932 Self Portrait by Suzanne Valadon.

To Karl

Yes, I admit few women can paint and I think that is because they are as a general rule not “ passionate souls” but sentimentalists. However there are one or two exceptions,

Suzanne Valadon and a girl I knew. ( Marie Louise )If ever you come to Simla I will show you several of her pictures. They are strange little paintings worthy of El Greco.

145 & 146 : Paula Moderson Becker Self Portrait, 1906 and Reclining Mother and Child,

1906

147 & BLANK; Holbein Porrtrait of Christina of Denmark, 1594. Nat. Gall. London 1933 In London I saw unforgetable things and I conceived a passion for Holbein. Ah I saw a painting of Gauguin, facing the water colour I felt like kneeling.

149 & 150 :

I would like to see Austria and Germany- there are lots of Breughel pictures I am absolutly thirsting to see.

151 & 152: Amrita went to Hungary in 1938 to marry her first cousin, Dr.Victor Egan. A portrait done in 1938. before being restored. She stayed there for a year and did some memorable paintings.

153 & 154: Winter, and the Merry Cemetry

155 & 156; Hungarian Market Place

To Karl: I am going to paint a village church in the background, a market place with little figures in black, the sky grey and the church tower white. Rather Breughalesque I imagine.

157 & 158: Female Torso and Hungarian Peasant.

159 & 160 The Patato Peeler

161 & 162: Two Girls and The Room by Balthus, 1947-48 Geza

Personal- bio into art history

Europe ref. as neutral bio. Which she transcends/ leaves behind.

Rearching for film with kumar . enlarged europe ref.

Bio- USG- early photo in white socks- to London

Princess Bamba- date

Meeting with Marie Antionette-Oct-1910- Opera singer

Family tree- with visuals/portraits

Marriage Jan-1912-

Marie Antionette pregnant- Childhood – photographs in Budapest and Dunaharesty.

Spoke only Hungarian

Children’s drawings- fairy stories

Literature

Simla- plays- reading

Music

Studied English and French

Pasquenelli- sculptor

Italian experience-

Watercolours

Art classes in Simla- Whitmarsh- Bevan Pateman

Ervin Baktay- student of Simon Hollesy-

Drawing from life

Literature-

1929-1934 Paris

NOTES FOR Amrtia Sher-Gil: The European Connection Italian connection:

In: Italian Art in the 20th Century: Paintings and Sculpture 1900-1988. Edited by Emily

Braun, Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Pia Vivarelli, Personalities and Styles in FigurativeArt of the Thirties. pp.181-184.

Despite the polices of centraliztion and nationalism pursued by the Fascist state, the social and cultural importance of the ‘local’, so intrinsic to Italian history, continued to manifest itself through out the thirties. Sei di Torino ( The Turin Six ) and Italiani di

Parigi ( The Italians of Paris ) and Scuola di via Cavour ( School of Via Cavour ) were the most important developments in Italian figurative painting around 1930. Consciously avoiding the use of ‘ism’, the new artistic groups were defined by their geographical or regional identity. p.181

The Turin Six: They addressed the problem of modernity in art through a deliberate reflection on European modernism, in particular the twentieth-century variants of Post-

Impressionism from Andre Derain, Albert Marque, Henri Matisse and Raoul Dufy to

Jules Pascin, Marie Laurencian and Amedo Modiglainai. P.182

The French critic Waldemar George encouraged a specific revival of the ‘Latin’ roots of

Biennale, George presented the work of a group of Italian painters residing in Paris, among them Massimo Campigli, Filippo de Pisis, Alberto Savinio, Gino Severini and

Mario Tozzi…….The Italians in Paris demonstrated an overriding interest in the antique and the culture of the museum, marked by the evocative qualities and compositional devices of Metaphysical painting. P.183

Carlo Bertelli

Modigliani, The Cosmopolitan Italian

A comparison between Carlo Carra’s ( The Drunken Gentlemen, 1916 ), the few nudesof

Giorgino Morandi in 1915 and the religious drawings produced by Amedeo Modigliani in 1916 reveals profound similarities. …. They consist of an abstracted, post Cubist space, the conscious use of Trecento models in an attempt to enhance the objective existence of things by accentuating their ‘tactile values’, and a desire for the classical rhythmic balance. P.57

Emily Braun

Mario Sironi and a Fascist Art

The aesthetics of ‘pure visibilty’— clearly delineated form, with an over-accentuated ‘

‘plastic’ or tactile quality --- comprised the chief characteristic of Magic Realism. ……

It was the dominant form of visual expression in Italy in the early twenties……reached its height at the Venice Biennale in 1924 where Sironi exhibited his sombre neo-classical portrait The Pupil, 1924 and Felice Casorati his arresting Midday, 1922. Magic Realism has been interpreted as part of the larger European phenomenon of a return to figurative painting, or to the ‘object’, in reaction against the excesses of the pre-war avant-grade. Yet as the word ‘magic’ suggests, and as it was intended by the German critic Franz Roh, who coined the term in 1925, this realism was anything but neutral or passive.

….Compositions with multiple, non-converging perspectives in a shallow space focus attention on the individual formation of each object, or what Roh termed the ‘moment of connection’.

Magic Realism was thus not the style of a return to order, but a visual metaphor of relativism. P.177

Massimo Campigli.b1895 d.1971. Lived in Paris 1919-1933. In the late twenties he traveled in Rumania and began a new series of scenes of women engaged in domestic and agricultural activities. The figures are distributed in asymetrical, hieratic compositions and hovered on a roughly textured ground, inspired by ancient frescos.

Ref: Jamini Roy influenced. Painting that Fori has a painting.

Tu parle; Boris Taslitsky

Chap.29

Jean Lenoble: Simonin snubbed all his works, finding them too heavy, lacking in spirit, and not very sponteanous. Ah! Spontaneity ! Didn’t we hear enough about.

The students rapidly discovered our little island, which they kept considering to be tendentious.

About painting the nude reclining. The Seine was our great island. There we would spend hours engaged in painting or chatting. The quays were our real workshops. There we painted each others portaits in the open air. There we exchanged ideas, about the way of conquering the world and of glory.

Rapheal, Rubens and their princely lives…., a timid attempt. We will show you what real life is.

Chap.31

A great retrospective of Delacroix at the Louvre.

Delacroix’s overwhelming power did not mellow with the love I felt towards Gericault.

The ture guru… the man through whom I touched ground.

One does not like art if one does not like Poussin.

I approached Chardin with silent respect slavering with envy.

What the impressionists arose in me was a real feeling of friendship while I thought I could hear Courbet telling me “ well, my boy, shall we go ?”. There was one of them whom I couldn’t bear whose mere sight unleashed my animal like frenzied, irrational antipathy: this was Gaugin. I looked for shelter from him alongside Manet’s generosity and Dega’s intelligence.

I was moving around the Louvre as one moves around the workshops. I was feeling in contact with works as one feels in contact with living beings.

Chap.32

One day I proclaimed that Siminon was a troglodyte. The name stuck to him. Jean thought it might be time to leave the school. I had made up my mind when Siminon admitted an independent student, a young woman, from a far away Eastern country and whose arrival convinced me immediately that I still had a lot to do and learn amongst the

‘slaves of Bonaparte street’.

Chap.33

She was born in these far away countries where the crocodiles eat the pilgrims, the holy cows men'’ food, where princesses live on pearls. Her playmates had been young tigers, she’d learnt babbling while charming rattle snakes, had slept under the black panther’s wakeful eye. She looked as if had come down the from stone fresco in order to eternalize on the banks of the River Seine the dramas and mysteries of Bramha. My eyes sunk into her black ones, as in a velvety pool of authority, out of which I escaped only to fall under the influence of her dark rosy lips. The workshop welcomed her in petrified silence.

It became quite different when she started painting and when the transposition of the model was born on her canvas. It was fine, it was flesh, it was violence allied to tenderness, it was both rape and respect, it clashed and it flowed harmony and tearing it apart at the same time. It was neither classical, nor romantic, nor contemporary, something belonging neither to yesterday or today, it belonged to all epochs and to the present, a sort of present that anticipates the future. I came near her and to uphold my courage, I addressed her with the words “ Hello Michelangelo” a greeting I wished to sound relaxed. Ho! She exclaimed, you like Michelangelo, he’s my god! He’s just abore, her neighbour interrupted, he’s even a stupid fool. He blinked his eyes, absorbed for a minute in his own work and whispered “ Cezanne, the greatest painter in the world”. Ilike him too, she answered, I like him as the genious, like all geniuses, but above all I place

Michelangelo and Beethoven. Her neighbour watched her with an ironic smile. Make a little effort beauty, go as far as Gericault, and you will make hell of a couple, Igor and you. We’ll marry you and have hell of a good time. She looked at me in wonder.

Gericault, really ? That’s amazing ! I like him very much, too. I tucked my hands into my pockets and asked with arrogance “ Never mind, what’s your name ? She picked up her brushes, mixed her colours, looked up again and quickely throwing her long black hair back, she said Is ‘tu’ used to address someone here ? Yes it was. Maybe we intended to change it ? She would have to get used to it. Well, if such is the use… My name is

Immortal… what is yours ?

Immortal ! How did I never guess ? Of course Immortal. Triple imbicile, could she have any other name.

I began raving. I bored Jean to death with various theories about the souls immortality, about the immortality of painting, of beauty.

On leaving Le Bon Coin, in the Pantheon square, I met Immortal, back from her trip throughout Europe. She was with a little old man with a white beard and a large green turban round his forehead. He was wearing a supple, red leather shoulder strap, at the end of which was hanging a long umbrella. The sight of such a character would have amused me, had I met him alone and had not known he was Immortal’s father; I was bedazzeled and filled with the greatest respect for him. Immortals smile filled me with happiness. Immortal back at the workshop occupied all my thoughts. I intently watched for her car, that she drove herself, quite an unusual thing at that time. She always had the best excuse in the world to justify her being late. Toscanini had dropped in without a warning to visit her mother who was once a famous opera singer. All those big names of high society about whom I could not give a damn.

With my mother she was perfect, kind, full of respect. Mummy liked her very much, but was worried. What are you aiming at my son. She was right sheperds do not marry princesses!

How well I feel here Immortal said, how I feel at ease her. You cannot imagine, Igor, how

I wish I was poor. Don’t stare at me with your wild eyes, you will make me laugh.

Well then, what did I say ?

She put her arms around my neck. Kiss me, Monsieur Saint-Just. Do you really want to chop of my head off ? She’d brought her gramaphone, she left it with me all the time, with our favourite records: Beethoven, Mozart, Boccherini; we argued about Bhrams. I know you French are ridiculous, it was Romain Rolland who taught you to despise Bhrams. It is enough to that a man of genius cannot bear another one, and if he is a writer your taste subscribes to his. You make me sick, with your propensity to think only according to the printed word.

I went in as one storms a place. I walked in the sort of unease which precedes panic.

Immortals mum was beautiful, tall, her hair dyed red with the most violent henna, she had an opulent elegence in her superb figure, but she was European. She was gazing upon me with her sparkling, clear eyes, in the passionate light of her radiant face, with her low cut dress.

Immortals father’s face was beautiful and mild, the lower half hidden behind the big white beard, his nose straight and thin, his eyes seemed unreal, as if in a dream. His immense forehead had fine lines joining the eyes, making them longer still. He was small, thin strengthless, as if in the habit of remaining endlessly motionless in yogic meditation, had annihilated his body. If this one demands every year his weight in gold and diamonds, the tax must be bearable. He’s a walking spirit.

They announce the guests. Italian writers, German musicians, Hungarian singers,

Excellencies from all over the world. I said to Immortal I have had enough of this. She said you stay here or I am not coming anymore. And also take a good look at those people whose heads you want to chop off, my darling little Robespierre.

I think you are deceiving yourself Igor. I think your head and your heart will never agree.

Look at this portrait you’re doing of me. Is this a portrait of a lover. I have no face in this portrait, there is nothing but colour relationship, and not a good one at that, between the blue of the cape and the red of the mouth.

But look at the portrait I made of you. It was an admirable painting, overflowing with rich hues. I despaired to be able to do as well even in twenty years time; and it wasn’t colours for colours sake, a simple decorative emotion, no, it was palpitating. I compared this work with my miserable painting, took a big brush and splashed some white all over my portrait of Immortal.

Well, you killed me, she said when she came back. You were right, Igor, it was bad; come today, if you want, we wont work, lets go for a walk along the quay, there you will tell me some stories, I like the stories you tell me.

BORIS TASLITZKY-1911

Taslitzky’s Russian emigre Russian father was killed in World war I, and boris lived in relative poverty with his working mother.

Friend with Francis Gruber, a child prodigy, together they took part in the Front

Populaire processions of 1934’ in which the museum was carried on the streets. Boris carried Gruber’s “ Jacques Callot’From 1935 onwards he was secretary of the Union of

Painters and sculptors.

Francis Francina in the Politics of Representation: Picasso & Leger and joined the PCF in

1944 & 45, However the leading figures celebrated in the party were Boris Taslitzky and

Andre Fougeron.

In 1946 Taslitzky who had been interned as a Communist Jew during the war, exhibited

The Little Camp at Buchenwald in the Art and Resistance exhibition in Paris along with

Picasso. The two paintings illustrate diff. Tradtions. B.T. nightmarish combination of El

Greco, Goya, Groz and Dix. Picassoo draws upon the legecies of Cubism and Surrealism, via his Guernica.

LUCIEN SIMON- 1861-1945

Painted fashionable Parisian genre scenes in a fairly rich and bright pallete.

YVES BRAYER

ANDRE HAMBURG b.1909

Left Simon Studio in 1930

GEORGES ROHNER. 1913- alive

Joined Simon 1930- left 1932 JACQUES DEPIERRE. B.1912

1930 Simon studio

HENRI JANNOT

JEAN AMBLARD

FRANCIS GRUBER

ROBERT HUMBOLT-1907- 1962

1931- Simon studio

PAUL ARZENS

MARIE LOUISE CHASSENY

FRANCOIS BERAUD- 1932- Ecole de Beax Arts

Jean Lasne.b.1911-

1930- Simon studio

IN HUNGARY JOSEPH NEMES. B 1989

ISTAVAN CSOK

ISTAVAN NAGY

ISTAVAN SZONY

AUREL BERNATH

ABA NOVAK

AMRITA SHER-GIL- WRITINGS- LETTERS

24-8-1937 to Karl

On Adding little boy to South Indian villagers going to market.

The boy was an after thought. The picture was nearly complete when I added him, the object being the balancing of the composition—which was somewhat like a pair of scales in which the weights are equally divided. So you don’t like the child’s face because it looks imbecile ( another point I disagree with you ). Don’t you think Douanier Rousseau, Derain and even sometimes the faces of Van

Gogh ( the latter in a rather terrifying manner ) are imbecile ? I think there is a certain charm in faces completely devoid of intelligence in art, stupid faces intelligently painted that stare at one with looks of blank idiocy from Greco-Roman paintings. I have attempted it in some measure of success in a few of my pictures ( for instance, Hill

Women )

I wholly disagree with you about Soutine’s work bearing the slightest resemblenceto, or at all being influenced by Modigliani. Except for an occasional angulaity of form, his tormented, nervous, rhapsodical art has nothing in common with the other’s calm painting, where every brush stroke, every speck of colour, is an act of conscious violation.

16-May 1937

I also love Van Gogh. Do you know that picture of his, the cornfield with black crows ?

It puts me into a state of violent emotion and divine restlessness. In spite of the fact that till now my special favourite has been Gaugain, I sometimes feel that Van Gogh was the greater of the two. The Elemental versus Sophistication ( no matter how sublime ) is apt to make the latter look bit flat by comparison.

Oct: 1932 to Indu I went to see an exhibition of the works of Szonyi, Aba Novak and Ivanyi Grunevald. Of the latter I do not even speak. I was deeply disappointed in Szonyi, in his soft colourless style. I don’t know why his style though apparently nothing like it reminds me ( of

Renoir whose “soft’ unenrgetic style I loathe so much ). I was amply repaid for my pains by the work of Aba Novak whose whole painting in spiteof the fact that he overwhelms his compoistion with figures and specially superfluous details ( though he paints them be beautufully ) which goes to the detriment of the “ keeping together “ of the composition as a whole, struck and charmed me by its fearlessness and real originality.

9 Nov.39

I would like to see Austria and Germany- there are lots of Breughel pictures I am absolutly thirsting to see.

To Karl

9 Nov.39

I am going to paint a village church in the background, a market place with little figures in black, the sky grey and the church tower white. Rather Breughalesque I imagine.

1 july 40 to karl

It is funny that I always meet the very things I need at the very time I need them—

Breughal and Renoir ( the latter till quite recently I heartly detested ) have in esstentials, though they are seemingly so different, a great deal in common with the Mughals and I discovered them at least to my great benefit.

1933

In London I saw unforgetable things and I conceived a passion for Holbein. Ah I saw a painting of Gauguin, facing the water colour I felt like kneeling.

Oct 1937 to Karl

My studio is quite bare, a huge room with white washed walls and only a couple of

Chinese paintings and the wotk of my friend, Marie Louise Chassany ) of whom I have spoken to you ( in whose pictures the sensitive strange charm of Picasso’s 1904-105 period and Soutine at his best is combined with an extraordinary fascination of tits own ) to adorn it.

17- 1-37

To Karl Yes, I admit few women can apint and I think that is because they are as a general rule not “ passionate souls” but sentimentalists. However there are one or two exceptions,

Suzanne Valadon and a girl I knew. If ever you come to Simla I will show you several of her pictures. They are strange little paintings worthy of El Greco.

14 March 1941

To Indu

I have wanted to write to you long before this, but I have also passed through a nervous crisis and am still far from being over it. Feeling impotnet, dissatisfied, irratable