Page 33 - Studio International - July 1966

shapes— of everything. A seed, a bird, a flowerpot, a At the World's Fair I also found a Mexican water-
watering-can, seems to focus a universe—a comment on colour in terracotta Mexican colours that delighted me,
life : the arrangements of his shapes and colours, in- and later my husband brought me as a birthday present
formed with Klee's imaginative creativity, can give, in a a beautiful Braque, Fish on a plate, with a transparent
few strokes or interweavings, the essential character of knife and fork. At least it bore a brass tag with the name
animate or inanimate object. His pictures—the ones I BRAQUE, and we loved it. Years later, a dealer thought
am drawn to, and I don't like all of them, and cer- it might be a forgery, possibly 'of the School of Braque',
tainly not equally—seem to me 'right' : they start one and this the painter confirmed. I still liked it, and would
off on an endless journey of insight and imagination. have kept it, but I was offered the price I had paid and
It is always the first stories of the poor boy and his crasser motives intervened. I accepted the proferred sum,
struggles which hold the reader, not a listing of later but I should still like that picture on my wall.
successes. I remember only vaguely my next steps, how I bought paintings from another San Franciscan too, a
the next klik-klik happened, what I now 'acquired'. I little old man, Matt Barnes, who painted oils in his studio
went to San Francisco World's Fair, which was crammed with the curtains drawn, almost always of a little man in
with pictures. I liked a painting, by a Chinese-American, a landscape with one foot up going somewhere. Matt
of a Sacramento River Boat, went to the painter's studio, Barnes never became widely known, at least outside
struck up a friendship, and later bought many Cali- California, but his pictures filled a romantic need for me.
fornia scenes from him. He came to Carmel and painted A year after I had bought my first Klee, the artist died,
there too, from my house. Dong Kingman was at that and I bought more Klees. The young man brought me
time a careful and modest painter, not yet 'discovered' by other pictures too: a large romantic Chirico, of a male
an American national magazine. nude in a red cap on a white horse with long flowing
mane and tail on a pink beach. By the time we moved to
New York we had a few more Lurçats, a small Utrillo, a
Dufy water-colour of A Ball, with satiric upper-class faces.
In New York I met J. B. Neumann and Carl Nieren-
dorf, the two famous Berlin collectors and dealers, and
saw their many Klees. Both had shows and I recollect
walking around and around and around and asking my-
self which I would, if I dared, buy. I did 'dare' buy some :
others I now see in museums and galleries the world over.
It was war time. Refugees came from Germany with
Georg Grosz, and more Klees, Chagalls, Utrillos,
Moholy-Nagy, Felix Itten, Kandinsky. By now I was a
regular visitor at the Museum of Modern Art and at
many private galleries.
Nierendorf died, and I managed to obtain Klee's highly
humorous Was Fehlt Ihm? and three Chagall water-colours
from his estate. After the war, Valentine Dudensing
gave up his New York gallery and said I could have five
paintings because I liked them so much. One was a
Picasso Cubist of 1913, two were Miros. Peggy Guggen-
heim, whose New York gallery had become a special and
rewarding place to lurk in, with her Surrealists— Tanguys
and Max Ernsts, and Jackson Pollocks, gave up New York
for Venice; one day she telephoned and offered me two
Klees on burlap I had loved and coveted, gone back to
see over and over, but never quite dared purchase, and
which, in any event, she had sworn never to part with.
They were Rotes Raubtier and a little train winding up a
hill with an abstract background of bright-coloured
rectangles. I bore them home under my arm.

It was during the war, I suppose, that I seriously became
`a collector'. J. B. Neumann arranged with me a large
exhibition, in aid of Allied relief, of art belonging to
stage and screen stars. Neumann knew more about Klee
than anyone except Will Grohmann, and loved to talk
about him.
Our exhibition was in a gallery lent by a Spanish
Paul Klee refugee who had brought over art works belonging to a
Blumenstock (Vase of flowers) 1937 Spanish gallery. It was she who introduced me to my first
Oil
16x 14 in. Primitives, which I fell for violently —Bombois and Vivin
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