I came across a photograph of a woman standing next to Arthur. I asked Arthur who the lady was. "Adele," he said. "She was an opera singer." There were thousands of questions that shot through my head to ask him about the exotically beautiful woman. But the day was late and Arthur was getting tired. Above is Adele, painted by Arthur Secunda in 1953. This painting demonstrates a totally different side of Arthur's work, more figurative than his later work. Arthur was 26 years old when he painted this piece. Interestingly, Arthur's son, Al, is in town this week. He is a few years younger than Arthur was when the portrait of Adele was painted. On camera, Al, Arthur and I spoke about jazz music, since Al is a jazz pianist. He mentioned that what he learned from his father was that when you master a technique, a style, it is important to move on, to develop new, unchartered territories (new for the artist). In the context of Arthur's later works of only a few years we can see this forward movement in technique and form. In the painting of Adele we can see fine detail, the delicate line. Later, we see rough, large brush strokes, until, in the last (the third below) we see a quasi-abstratc figure.
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Matteo Marchisano-AdamoWriter, Producer, Director Archives |