De Grazia: The Man and the Myths

5: Learning from the Masters

43 5 Learning from the Masters Primarily Diego Rivera gave me confidence. He talked to me as he would another painter. —De Grazia1 while spendinG The summer of 1940 in Tucson, De Grazia lined up an exhibit of his work called Dust of Mexico at the Arizona Inn, owned by former Congresswoman Isabella Greenway, in Tucson . One buyer turned out to be Raymond Carlson, editor of the fast-growing Arizona Highways magazine, who purchased several of his paintings for five to ten dollars apiece. Carlson liked De Grazia’s work so much that he decided to publish photos of six paintings, which the magazine called “Mexico and the Simple People,” in the February 1941 issue of Arizona Highways. This proved to be De Grazia’s first big break.2 Carlson had transformed the state-funded Arizona Highways, founded in 1925, into a popular monthly publication that at its peak reached 350,000 readers, three-quarters of whom lived outside Arizona . Carlson wrote that the Dust of Mexico exhibit, particularly the painting Defeat, pleased him because “we, too, feel very deeply about Mexico and the simple people there, and the painting makes one feel good inside.” A picture of De Grazia resplendent in a suit and tie, his hair slicked back and his mustache neatly trimmed, accompanied the article. Without the mustache his appearance resembled that of silent movie star Rudolph Valentino, also an Italian. De Grazia held a pipe in his chapTer 5 44 right hand with his index finger curled around the stem, much like the way Valentino held a cigarette.3 De Grazia’s friend, magician John Alexander, said he once kidded De Grazia about being “a little gigolo” because of the way he dressed in those days.4 At this time De Grazia began using a theme that flowed through his paintings the rest of his life. “I like to portray people as they really are,” he said, “not merely to present a tragic view of life, but to enrich the experience of those who have not really seen the common Mexican people.”5 Carlson, who wrote articles accompanying the paintings, quoted Charles Tracy, an author, dramatist, and artist, as saying that De Grazia had approached him with several paintings. “I knew at once that regular art instruction was not for him,” Tracy said, “so I encouraged him. Today he surprises me by exhibiting at least a score of masterful paintings. . . . In these days we tag such painters as ‘primitives.’” Tracy also said he wouldn’t have been surprised to find many of De Grazia’s paintings hanging in art museums within five years. “He understands and sympathizes with the underprivileged Mexicans, and with bold direct brush strokes he paints as his heart directs. He could never use color science or any other science with his kind of graphics—to him the sky is blue, clouds are white, old shacks are brown, the faces of his subjects are simple and sad—so he paints them that way—it is his kind of art, and it is wonderful.”6 While the reviews pleased De Grazia, sales disappointed him. “One would expect that after a plug like that [the Arizona Highways article ] you might hope to sell a few paintings,” he said. “Actually, I did sell a few, but damned few. Those were pretty dark days, and more than once I considered throwing in the towel and going back into business. It was a constant struggle between the call of the artist and the demands of economics.” It didn’t help that World War II was imminent, and people were either financially strapped or disinclined to buy the paintings of a virtually unknown artist.7 About the same time that the first Arizona Highways article appeared, a De Grazia painting, Matador in Grey, was exhibited at the Academy of Allied Arts in New York City, one of thirty-one paintings submitted by some of the nation’s leading artists. De Grazia’s was the only painting submitted from west of the Mississippi. Matador in Grey depicted the frenzy, action, and drama of the bullfight.8 Learning from the Masters 45 And it seems the Mexican people appreciated De Grazia’s art. In a ceremony usually reserved for a president or governor, a matador —a woman named María Cruz—opened the bullfighting season in Naco, Sonora, Mexico, on May 11, 1941, by killing the first bull in...