|
|
Ad Code: 3
|
An example of work by Norman David Narotzky
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
|
|
|
This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| The following biography is provided by the artist, 2006:
Norman Narotzky was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1928 and has lived in Spain since 1958, working in Barcelona and Cadaqués, with regular visits to New York. In Barcelona, he has been Director of Printmaking Workshops for Collectors Guild and Fine Arts 260 and has taught printmaking.
He was educated at the High School of Music and Art in New York from 1941 to 1945, and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooklyn College-City University in 1949. From 1949 to 1952, he attended Cooper Union Art School, from 1954 to 1956, the Atelier 17, Paris, and in 1979 earned a BFA from Cooper Union. He also attended the Art Students League and Kunstakademie, Munich.
SOLO SHOWS: 51 Solo Shows in Europe and America including:
Archer Gallery, London;
Galería René Métras, Barcelona;
Grand Central Moderns, N.Y.;
Museo Machado de Castro, Coimbra, Portugal;
Manhattanville College, N.Y.;
Northern Michigan University, Marquette, MI;
Institut Français de Barcelona;
SELECTED GROUP SHOWS:
Brooklyn Museum, N.Y., 1952
Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.,1962
Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, 1962
Witte Museum, San Antonio, Texas, 1954;
National Gallery, Oslo 1955;
Salon de Mai & Salon des Réalités Nouvelles
AWARDS: New York State Scholarship, 1945 - 1949
Art Students League of NY Scholarships, 1945-46;
Thekla M. Bernays Scholarship, Art Students League of NY
Wooley Foundation Fellowship, Atelier 17, Paris, 1954-55;
French Government Fellowship, Atelier 17, Paris 1955-56;
Philadelphia Museum Purchase Prize, 1956;
Fulbright Fellowship, Munich
Grand Prize, Best Work in Show, II Bienal d'Art, FC Barcelona
Note, July 2003:
The English language magazine "Barcelona Metropolitan" has dedicated its cover story to me in their July issue. You can also see it on their web site:
www.barcelona-metropolitan.com until the end of July, 2003.
Following is the text of that article, courtesy Esther Jones, Managing Director of Creative Media Group that publishes the "Barcelona Metropolitan":
"The painter and the dictator"
This long-time resident of Barcelona remembers when his art displeased El Caudillo. By Roger Guettinger
In his Eixample studio on a recent afternoon, the Barcelona-based American artist Norman Narotzky was showing visitors his newest paintings. Narotzky, a compact, gray-bearded man in his mid-seventies, has been living and painting in Barcelona for the past 45 years. There was a time, though, back in the Sixties, when it seemed possible that Narotzky's career in Barcelona might be cut short. Two of his canvases in a 1966 solo exhibition at Galería René Metras on Consell de Cent (one of 52 one-man exhibitions during Narotzky's long career) roused the ire of the Franco regime.
But, first, Narotzky's newest paintings. One by one he lined them up against the walls of his studio. Then he stepped back and waited for reactions. On square, medium-sized canvases Narotzky has painted a stunning series of monstrous faces in vibrant acrylic colors that range from acid greens to rosy pinks. They are the faces of heroes and gods, or perhaps demiurges and demons-it is hard to say. Whoever they are, these superhuman presences seem to peer down at the viewer from above, and what they see leaves them with expressions that vary from quizzical to slightly astonished to gleefully mean.
For the past several years, in a series of paintings he calls "Barcelona/New York", Narotzky has been exploring architectural fantasies. In New York City, where he grew up, Narotzky concentrates on the fanciful ornamentation of turn-of-the-century buildings. When it comes time to turn the architectural details that engage his imagination into paintings, Narotzky distorts. He adds anti-realistic colours, changes shapes, and lets his paint drip down the canvas to suggest the patina of time. His new paintings are inspired by faces on a series of buildings at 15th Street and Eighth Avenue in New York.
The two notorious works from Narotzky's 1966 exhibition, the ones that scandalized the Franco government, are still in the artist's personal collection. He offered to show them to his visitors. They are large acrylic and collage paintings, twin portraits of Los Reyes Católicos, Isabel and Fernando. Once again, Narotzky's colours are vivid and unusual, not unlike the colours in his newest work. "How would you describe your colours?" one of Narotzky's visitors asked him. "I can't describe them," he said. "That's why I paint, you see."
The portraits of the royal pair who instituted the Inquisition in Spain served as a point of departure for a denunciation of racial, religious and political persecution. Using a technique of images superimposed on other images, Narotzky places Holocaust victims in Fernando's crown and a portrait of Hitler in his eye. Isabel, whom the Spanish government was then sponsoring for Catholic sainthood, wears a necklace from which tortured Inquisition victims hang upside down, like charms. The longer one looks at the paintings the more one sees: a swastika, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, the Ku Klux Klan, the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada, Jesus Christ being burned at the stake.
James A. Michener describes the ensuing brouhaha in the Barcelona chapter of his 1968 book, "Iberia". Madrid soon got wind of the paintings. Carlos Antonio Arean, of the Ministry of Information and Tourism, published an article attacking Narotzky, the portraits, and the gallery owner who showed them, Rene Metras. After noting the foreign origins of the two culprits (Metras was French), Arean went on to say, "Here in Spain . . . despite our alleged dictatorship, these canvases were able to be exhibited. Clearly this will not happen again, because necessary measures have already been taken to prevent any attack against our generous history from slipping into any exhibition."
Spanish authorities protested to the American Embassy in Madrid, and Arean paid a visit to Narotzky's studio. At the opening of his next exhibition in Barcelona, Narotzky was introduced to a secret policeman sent by the government to make sure that nothing offensive was on display. Metras, for his part, was subjected to an intensive two-week police investigation into his accounts and personal life, with implied threats that he might be expelled from the country.
Narotzky felt it only right that he should have his own say in the matter; so he contacted the art editor of the "New York Times" and proposed writing an article, using a pseudonym, about the incident. "If they had published it under my name," Narotzky says now, "I would have been expelled from the country for sure." Narotzky's article, "New Pressures on the New Spanish Painting", appeared under the byline "H. G. Wilson" in The New York Times on June 11, 1967.
"Madrid's response was vehement," Wilson/Narotzky wrote. "The works coming at a moment when there was a concerted drive to have Isabel canonised were interpreted as direct political attacks." Wilson/Narotzky reports that the Franco official Arean, upon visiting Narotzky's studio, told the artist, "I regret we didn't hear about the show in time to close it."
Several months later, Arean responded to the Wilson article in a letter to the editor of The New York Times. The two paintings were "blatantly insulting," according to Arean. "For instance," he wrote, referring to the Inquisition victims dangling from Isabel's necklace, "in the cleavage . . . of Isabella . . . four masculine figures were to be seen sliding down inside the royal bosom. I am sure that a similar attack by a foreign artist residing in the United States against any great national figure, would deserve the same rebuff as the one by the Spaniards, including myself, who saw Narotzky's painting of our Great Queen."
Arean suspected that "H. G. Wilson" was a pseudonym, Narotzky says. But, Arean mistakenly believed that the true author of the Times article was Narotzky's wife, Mercedes, an art historian who occasionally wrote art criticism for local publications. H. G. Wilson's true identity has remained a secret until now.
Why did Narotzky settle in Barcelona? Because of Mercedes, who was from here. The two met in the mid-Fifties in Paris where Narotzky was studying art. By then, he'd already spent one summer in Cadaqués, falling in love with what was then a sleepy little fishing village. After Norman and Mercedes married and set up house in Barcelona, they spent every summer in Cadaqués. They eventually built a house there.
After Los Reyes Catolicos, Narotzky did a series of multifaceted portraits of iconic figures like Picasso (purchased by James Michener), Sitting Bull, Billy the Kid, and Abraham Lincoln. Then, in the mid-Seventies, Narotzky changed directions. He started painting landscapes, finding his inspiration at first in the hills around Cadaqués. After a time, the landscapes began to morph into vaguely human shapes. Sometimes, viewing these paintings, it is hard to decide whether one is looking at a voluptuous woman or a flesh-colored mountain. Narotzky, who worked on this series for 15 years, would say that one is looking at both. In the mid-Eighties, working under a grant from the Generalitat, he did more than 30 paintings in this style of the mountains of Montserrat.
In the early Nineties, the sensuous landscapes gave way to cityscapes of Barcelona. The cityscapes, in turn, brought Narotzky to the architectural details that inform his current "Barcelona/New York" series. The latest paintings in this seriesthe 15th Street and Eighth Avenue faceswill be on show in September, 2003, in an exhibition at Fundacio Niebla in the Costa Brava town of Casavells.
| |
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|