Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Paintings Of Degrazia And Munch

By Darren Hartley


A lifelong appreciation of the native cultures in the Sonoran Desert was the DeGrazia paintings. Ettore, nicknamed Ted, met and married Alexandra, the daughter of Fox Theater owner Nicholas Diamos in 1936. Ted and Alexandria left an evening ballet performance in 1942 to head for the Palacio Municipal to see muralist Diego Rivera at work.

Ted married his second wife, Marion Sheret, a New York sculptor, in 1947 in the jungles of Mexico. Together in the early 1950s, they bought a 10 acre foothills site to build what was to become known as Ted's Gallery in the Sun, to showcase his passionate DeGrazia paintings.

Ted established the DeGrazia Foundation to ensure the permanent preservation of DeGrazia paintings for future generations. This was an afterthought after he decided to set 100 of his paintings ablaze in 1976 as a protest to the inheritance taxes set on works of art. This infamous event became part of Ted's art legacy.

The mental illness Edvard Munch's father suffered from appears to be the root cause for the strong mental anguish displayed in the majority of Munch paintings. Brought up with impounding fears of hell, Edvard grew up with many repressed emotions that led to his work taking a deeper tone.

The term given to the style of Munch paintings was Symbolism. They were expressions of a personal sense of art, instead of an external view. They were representations of the inward feelings and repressed emotions of Edvard. In short, what you get is not what you actually see, when it comes to Munch paintings.

There was a period between 1892 and 1908 that Munch paintings took to tones and colors that were a bit more cheerful, compared to Edvard's past accomplishments. This was a time when Edvard showed an interest in nature. This colourful, playful and fun tone noted in his work was in complete opposition to the dark and somber style of his earlier career.




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