André Durand

Paintings by André Durand

Born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1947, André Durand is a Canadian photographer and painter of Irish ancestry who works within the European Hermetic tradition. At the age of seventeen, he left Canada with his wife Ludmilla to emigrate to Europe. Through its history, Hermeticism was closely associated with the idea of a primeval, divine wisdom that was revealed to ancient sages. Hermeticism remains influential within esoteric Christianity, particularly in the Christian mystical tradition of Maartinism. The anonymously written 1967 French tome “Meditations on the Tarot”, later edited and published by Robert Powell in 1980, summarizes the theory and practices of Christian Hermeticism.

Best known for his allegorical portraits of such figures as Princess Diane, Durand’s mythologically inspired paintings are the foundation of his work. These pieces display his deep understanding of the rituals and myths of both Christian and Classical traditions. Influenced by Michelangelo, Rubens and Titian, Durand tries to unite his religion with his art; however, he approaches the subject with the objective and philosophical criteria of a Neo-modernist.

In 1970 André Durand painted a series of images inspired by the dancers of the British Royal Ballet. His 1972 portrait of Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen, whose work often bears heavily on the psychology of its characters, is housed in London’s National Portrait Gallery. Durand has also received international acclaim for his official portraits of Pope John Paul II and the fourteenth Dalai Lama.

In 2000, Durand became artist in residence at London’s Kingston Upon Thames University. A major exhibition in 2006, entitled “Durand Wholly Pictures” and which covered six years of work, was displayed in churches and cathedrals in the county of Sussex. These works depicted devotional Christian narratives set in traditional Sussex landscapes. In November of 2007, André Durand produced his oil on linen “Daniel in the Lions’ Den”; the sale of the painting and its limited edition prints benefited the Demelza Hospice Care for Children, a charity in Kent that provides support to life-limited children and their families.

After his return to Italy, André Durand visited the commune of Torre del Greco in Naples and the coastal town of Sperlonga, known for its sculptures and Roman sea grotto at the Villa of Tiberius. At the invitation of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Sperlonga, he opened a studio at the museum as artist in residence for two years. From 2010 to 2012, Durand began a series of round formal paintings on the subject of the Stations of the Resurrection, many of which contain the Grotto of Tiberius in the background.

Durand published several art photography volumes of his work in 2012. Most notable among them is the “Fotograf ando Statue per Anno”, an image collection of the statuary in Sperlonga’s National Archeological Museum. Containing text co-written by the museum’s director Marisa de’Spagnolls, this volume of sculptural work is the only comprehensive photographic archive of the museum’s collection.

André Durand’s work has been featured in many solo exhibitions in Italy and England. These include, among others, “Frammenti Classici” in 1995 at London’s Archeus Fine Art; the 2000 “Soggetti Italianizzati” at the Galleria Albemarle in London; and “Via Lucis e Lagrime di San Pietro” at Galleria Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Durand’s work is in many private collections and the permanent collections of the Scottish National Gallery and London’s National Portrait Gallery. He currently lives and works in Sperlonga, Italy.

Images of André Durand’s work, a manifesto on Neo-modernism, enquiries for commissions, and contact information can be found at the artist’s site: http://andredurandportraits.com

Second Insert Image: André Durand, “Saint Christopher Cynocephalus”, 2010, “Sacred” Series, Oil on Linen, 167.5 x 112 cm

Third Insert Image: André Durand, “Narcissus”, 2001, “Mythology” Series, Oil on Linen, 61 x 48 cm, Private Collection, Rome

Bottom Insert Image: André Durand, “Giordano Bruno Burning”, 2000, “Profane” Series, Oil on Linen, 203.2 x 167.6 cm

Luchino Visconti: Film History Series

Photographers Unknown, Parts and Pieces Making a Whole: Set Fourteen

Born in Milan in November of 1906, Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate Pozzolo, was an Italian screenwriter, stage director and filmmaker. A major figure in Italian art and culture, he was one of the pioneers of cinematic neorealism, a film movement that explored the conditions of the poor and lower working class, which was shot almost exclusively on location and generally filmed with nonprofessional actors and local people.

One of seven children born into a prominent noble family in Milan, Luchino Visconti grew up in the family seat, the Palazzo di Modrone in Via Cerva, as well as in Grazzano Viconsti Castle, the family estate. Exposed in his early years to music, art and theater,Visconti studied cello with the Italian cellist and composer Lorenzo de Paolis and met the poet and playwright Gabriele D’Annunzio, composer Giacomo Puccini, and the conductor Arturo Toscanini.

During the second World War, Visconti joined the Italian Communist Party, which he saw as the only viable opponent to Mussolini’s Italian Fascism. After Mussolini’s overthrow and Italy’s armistice in September of 1943 with the Allies, he began working with the Italian resistance and provided his villa in Roma as a meeting place for oppositional artists. After the Germans invaded Italy, Visconti went into hiding in the mountains where he hid English and American prisoners of war after their escapes. He also provided shelter to the resistance fighters in Rome.

Through the intercession of their common friend Coco Chanel, Luchino Visconti began his filmmaking career as a set dresser on directorJean Renoir’s 1936 short feature “Partie de Campagane”. He also worked with Renoir on the 1941 historical drama “Tosca”, until it was interrupted by the war. Along with film director Roberto Rossellini, Visconti joined the salon of Vittorio Mussolini, who was then Italy’s national arbitrator for cinema and the arts. While with this group of artists, he wrote the screenplay for his first film as director, the 1943 “Ossessione (Obsession)”, one of the first neorealist movies to be made. Visconti, in collaboration with a group of writers, adapted the film from a French version of “The Postman Always Rings Twice” given to him byJean Renoir during the time they worked together in France.

In 1948, Visconti wrote and directed “The Earth Trembles”, an exploration of working-class fishermen in a small village, which was based on Giovanni Verga’s novel “The House by the Medlar Tree”. This film received a Special International Award at the 9th Venice International Film Festival. After filming his 1951 drama film “Bellissima”, a satire of the postwar Italian film industry, Visconti diverted from the neorealist movement with his 1954 melodrama “Senso”, a color film which combined romanticism with realism. He returned to neorealism with his 1960 “Rocco and His Brothers”, a story about Southern Italians who migrate to Milan hoping to find financial stability. This film won Silver Ribbons from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists for Best Director and Screenplay.

Through the 1960s, Luchino Visconti’s films became more personalized. He felt the conflict between the post-war world of difficult economic and moral conditions, including its poverty and injustice, and his origins from an important and wealthy noble family. He considered himself as belonging to a past world, particularly that of the nineteenth-century. Visconti’s 1963 “The Leopard”, based on author Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s novel of the same name, depicts the decline of the old social order and its aristocracy and the rise of the new modern world. In his research for the film, he searched through world literature for relevant works to show discrepancies between familial generations and their world views. “The Leopard”, the sixth most popular film of the year in France, won the Palme d’Or at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival.

Visconti’s 1969 “The Damned”, tells the story of a German industrialist’s family which begins to disintegrate during the Nazi’s consolidation of power in the 1930s. It is regarded as the first of Visconti’s films described as “The German Trilogy”; this 1969 film is followed by the 1971 “Death in Venice” and the 1973 “Ludwig”, a biographical film about the life and death of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. The October opening of “The Damned” in Rome met with critical acclaim; however, it faced controversy from the rating board due to its sexual content, including depictions of homosexuality, pedophilia, rape and incest. Upon its entry to the United States, it was given an X rating, which was only lowered to an R rating after twelve minutes of offending footage were cut. The film won the Italian Film Journalists’ 1970 Silver Ribbon Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Luchino Visconti’s next film was the1971 “Death in Venice”, written by Visconti and screenwriter Nicola Badalucco. Based on Thomas Mann’s 1912 novel of the same name, it tells the story of composer Gustav von Aschenbach, a man dying from heart disease, who travels with his wife to Venice for rest, unaware that the city is in the midst of a cholera epidemic. The composer soon develops an obsession with the beauty of an adolescent Polish boy named Tadzio, who is staying with his family in the same hotel. “Death in Venice” was nominated for several awards: BAFTA Awards for Best Direction and Best Film, and the 1971 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Visconti’s film won both the David di Donatello and the Nastro d’Argento for Best Director.

Baptized and raised in the Roman Catholic church, Luchino Visconti remained a devout Catholic throughout his life. His first three-year relationship, which started in 1936, with photographer Horst P. Horst remained discreet due legal and social conventions of the time. In his later years, Visconti appeared openly with his lovers, among whom were actor Udo Kier and film director Franco Zeffirelli. His last lover was the Austrian actor Helmut Berger, who played Martin in “The Damned” and later appeared in Visconti’s 1973 “Ludwig” and the 1974 “Conversation Piece”.

Luchino Visconti, who was also a celebrated theater and opera director, suffered a stroke in 1972. He died in Rome of a second stroke at the age of sixty-nine in March of 1976. On the island of Ischia where Visconti had his summer residence, there is a museum dedicated to his work.

Note: An interesting article on the film “The Damned”, including information on its technical production, is Wheeler Winston Dixon’s “Grandeur and Decadence: Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969)” located at: https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2021/cteq/grandeur-and-decadence-luchino-viscontis-the-damned-1969/

Top Insert Image: Horst P. Horst, “Luchino Visconti, Paris”, 1937, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Luchino Visconti, “Rocco and His Brothers”, (Alan Delon and Renato Salvatori), 1960, Astor Pictures

Third Insert Image: Luchino Visconti, “The Damned” (Helmut Berger, Dirk Bogarde and Ingrid Thulin), Ital-Noleggio Cinematografico and Warner Brothers-Seven Arts 1969,

Fourth Insert Image: Mario Tursi, “Luchino Visconti with Björn Andrésen on the Set of “Death in Venice”, 1970, Gelatin Silver Print

Bottom Insert Image: Luchino Visconti, “The Leopard” (Burt Lancaster), 1963, Titanus/ Parthé/ 20th Century Fox

Candido Pontinari

The Paintings of Candido Portinari

Considered one of the most important Brazilian painters, Candido Portinari was a prominent and influential member of Brazil’s Neo-Realist movement. Producing more than five thousand canvases, Portinari’s inspiration was rooted in his formative years spent with family on a Brodowski coffee plantation. He developed a social preoccupation throughout his work and was active in both the cultural and political worlds of Brazil.

Candido Portinari was born in December of 1903 in the Brodowski municipality of São Paulo, Brazil. He received formal education at the local school until 1912, when, at the age of nine, his family’s poverty forced his suspension of education. However, even at a young age, Portinari manifested an interest and aptitude in drawing and painting. At the age of fifteen, he assisted a visiting group of Italian painters and sculptors who had come to the area for the purpose of decorating local small town churches.

In 1919, Portinari moved to Rio de Janeiro with friends of his parents, the Toledo family, who owned a boarding house in the city. He enrolled in the Lyceum of Arts and Trades and, in the following year, at the National School of Fine Arts, where he regularly attended figure drawing classes. Portinari exhibited his work for the first time in 1922 and received an Honorable Mention for his portrait of classmate Ezequel Fonseca Filho. At this time he became one of the first Brazilian artists to incorporate Modernist elements in his work, which would feature in all future work.

In 1924 Candido Portinari submitted eight works to the selection panel of the National School of Fine Arts, of which the panel chose his seven portraits for the exhibition. A pivotal point in his career occurred in 1928 with the presentation of twelve works at the 35th General Exhibition of Fine Arts. For his oil portrait of poet and diplomat Olegário Mariano, he won the European Travel Prize and achieved recognition in the press.

After a solo exhibition of twenty-five portraits at the Palace Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, Portinari traveled to Paris, settling in the artist haven of Montparnasse. He visited museums in Europe and met other artists working in the various trends of Modernism, mostly drawn to the styles of Cubism and Surrealism. In 1930, Portinari participated in a group exhibition of Brazilian art at the Exposition d’Art Brésilien in Paris, where he entered two works, a still life and a portrait. While in Paris, he met Maria Victoria Martinelli, a nineteen year old Uruguayan, who would become his lifelong companion.

Portinari decided, during this Parisian stay, that the prominent subject of his work would be the colorful people and landscapes in his Brodowski homeland. Returning to Brazil with Martinelli in 1931, he began a prolific period of work as an artist. In a 1932 solo exhibition at the Palace Hotel promoted by the Brazilian Artists Association, Portinari presented over sixty works. For the first time, the artist showed paintings with Brazilian themes, primarily scenes from his childhood, circus themes, and scenes of circle games.

Portinari painted his first work with a social theme “The Evicted” in 1934; in the same year, his portraiture work “Mestizo” was purchased by the Pinacoteca de São Paulo and became the first of his paintings to be included in a public institution. At the invitation of Celso Kelly whose portrait he had painted in 1926, Portinari was hired in 1935 to teach mural and easel painting at the Art Institute of the Federal District University in Rio de Janeiro. Between 1935 and 1940, Portinari produced several major works, which portrayed the Brazilian spirit with all its hardships, but also its strengths, hard work and independence.

Candido Portinari’s 1935 “Coffee”, a large painting depicting the hard-working coffee harvesters and baggers, was entered into the Carnegie Institute exhibition and won Second Honorable Mention. Portinari produced four large panels for the Art Deco-designed Monument Via Dutra, which celebrated the construction of the Rio-São Paulo motorway. These interior murals were the first of his works on the themes of socialism and nationalism.He also created exterior mosaic panels and twelve fresco murals for the Modernist-designed Gustavo Capanema Palace.

In the years that followed, Portinari’s work gained greater recognition in the United States. In 1939 he painted three panels, “Northeastern Rafts”, “Gaúcha Scene”, and “Night of Saint John”, for the interior of the Brazilian Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. Impressed by the paintings, Alfred H. Barr, then director of the New York’s MOMA, showcased Portinari’s work in a solo exhibition at the museum, a first time for a Brazilian artist. This led to a commission by the Library of Congress to create murals to decorate its magnificent Hispanic Reading Room.

In the 1940s, Candido Portinari turned to politics, becoming a full member of the Brazilian Communist Party, and ran for congress and senate twice, but was defeated narrowly. In 1947 he left for exile in Uruguay where he was to stay until 1951 when, benefitting from a thaw in government persecution, he returned to Brazil for the rest of his life. It was in 1952 that Portinari started his best known work, the grandiose double mural “Guerra e Paz (War and Peace)”, commissioned by the Brazilian government as a gift to the United Nations, to be displayed in the United Nations’s newly built headquarters in New York City.

These panels are Portinari’s masterpiece and one of the most recognizable pieces of Brazilian art. Measuring individually an imposing 46 by 32 feet, Portinari sought to encapsulate in this work the hopes and fears that the newly founded organization represented to a world reeling from the horrors of the Second World War. He worked on the project for four years and produced one hundred-eighty sketches to complete his two-paneled mural. The dark-blue, purple and red palette of the “War” tableau contrasts starkly with the lighter yellow tones of its companion “Peace”, offering all its viewers a reminder of the peace mission of the United Nations.

For the completion of this monumental project, Portinari sacrificed his own health. During the long process of creating the two panels, Portinari became increasingly sick due to the toxicity of the paint fumes he inhaled while painting the panels. Dedicated to complete the two murals, he finished his work in 1956; however, he suffered from health issues, showing symptoms of lead poisoning, throughout the last decade of his life. Candido Portinari died on February 6, 1962 due to contact with the paint. His dedication to his work at the expense of his health made him even more of a legend among the people of Brazil, a martyr to art and the cause of equality.

Top Insert Image: Paulo Rossi Osir, “Candido Portinari”, 1935, Oil on Canvas, Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo: Second Insert Image: Candido Portinari, “Flautista”, 1957, Oil on Canvas, 41 x 50 cm, Private Collection; Third Insert Image: Candido Pontinari, “Mastiço”, 1934, Oil on Canvas, Pinacoteca de São Paulo: Bottom Insert Image: Candido Portinari, “Guerra e Paz (War and Peace”, 1952-1956, Dyptch in Oil on Six-Sheet Cedar Plywood, Each Panel: 14.32 x 10.66 meters, United Nations General Assembly, New York City