DeGrazia

I have a love affair with the Southwest. I lived in southern Arizona for two years in the early 1970s, and that’s where my love affair began. Everything about the environment seemed to agree with me—the Spanish architectural influence, the dry heat, the desert in springtime bloom, and finally, the “muy Buena comida mexicana.”  

During those two years, I learned about Ettore “Ted” DeGrazia, an American impressionist painter.

DeGrazia was a man of many talents but was most noted for his impressionist paintings of Indian children.  I first learned about him through my subscription to Arizona Highways magazine. I wanted to know more about Arizona and the magazine was a great place to begin. He was featured several times in the magazine along with his paintings and I liked everything about his work.  I copied his paintings several times during my painting attempts, but I could never capture the essence of his work.  He commented that his paintings are his life.  They are his experience of what he has felt and known and such things are not easily expressed in art.  I agree with him. Your art and expression are in your heart and not something that someone can duplicate or feel. 

I never had the opportunity to visit his Gallery in the Sun studio which he designed and built, but it’s on my bucket list to see someday.  I’m sad that in 1976 he took about 100 of his paintings into the Superstition Mountains near Phoenix and set them on fire.  He did this to protest inheritance taxes on his works of art which by then had become highly acclaimed and valuable and he said his family had no money to pay an inheritance tax.  All they would have left is his work and not money. He passed away six years later in 1982.  

Imagine my surprise when I found this framed print at Goodwill.  This one is called Flower Boy.  The cashier told me they had another picture but the frame broke.  Likely they threw it away ☹.

The necklace draped across the picture was something I bought in 1973 when I lived in Arizona.  It’s signed by DeGrazia and was authorized to be made and sold by the Gallery in the Sun.  I’ve carried this little charm around for 52 years.

One of his quotes is, “It’s not how much paint from the tube I put on the canvas or even how much I leave out. I work for the feeling of a piece.”  That is me.  I work for the feeling and not everybody gets it but that’s what art is all about.