Page 37 - Studio International - July 1966

keep up with new ideas . . . sometimes you succeed,
sometimes you don't. You see as many shows as you can.
If I liked Klee, could I like Dubuffet? It worried me if
I did not. I ought to... Every artist is saying something...
it's up to you to make him speak to you if he can. But
there were others of whom I had no doubt at all. After I
came back to Europe from over twenty years in the
United States I fell head over ears in love with Germaine
Richier, with Cesar, Moore, Laurens, Picasso—of course,
who could resist him ? Marini's Horses and riders show-
ing the agony and torment of horses under bombing. At
one time I had acquired seven Marinis, from a tiny six-
inch bronze to a garden statue four feet high on which a
monkey of mine used to sit and contemplate. Giacometti,
Degas— but why pursue the list? New ones develop con-
stantly.
As I have tried to say, I didn't know much, but I did
know or learned to trust, what I liked, and I never treated
art as investment (though that was what it became). I
had no inkling of how 'clever' I was: on the contrary I
often felt guilty at spending money, as my mother might
have thought, on my own preferences.
I found, too, that when I could not make up my mind
between two pictures, and risked foundering in the con-
flict between them, I could resolve it by buying both. A
German refugee dealer once had three extraordinarily
beautiful, small Klees, Church, Chapel, and Reflecting
window, and he needed funds. I spent an agonizing after-
noon trying to decide between them and ended my
troubles by taking all three.
They were Klees, weren't they? They went klik—klik—
klik. r

Fernand Leger Germaine Richier
George Grosz
Church and houses Woman 1911 Girl with dove 1954-5
Watercolour Bronze
Ink and colour
28 x 19 1/2 in. 12 1/2 x 10 in. 641n.