Art: Carnegie Winners

It was still a secret last week, though a poorly kept one. Long before the official cablegram arrived from Pittsburgh, friends rushed into Madrid’s swank new Café Fuentelarreyna to blurt the news to Hipólito Hidalgo de Caviedes: The picture he had finished so quickly that he had had no time to varnish it before shipping it to the U. S. last August, had just won the $1,000 first prize at the 33rd Carnegie International show. It was no less exciting news in Pittsburgh, where Carnegie directors have long had a fondness for modern Spanish painting, have seldom been able to find one that the judges thought worthy of first prize.

Almost unknown in the U. S., handsome young Artist Caviedes is no stranger in Madrid either to artists or socialites. A well-off son of a distinguished sculptor, he and his handsome young wife are frequently seen golfing at the country club, lunching at the Ritz. Ever since he was old enough to crawl, Hipolito de Caviedes has scribbled, scrawled, finally painted in his father’s studio. Like most other young artists, he shares the current enthusiasm for murals, has done much to decorate his native city since the fall of the monarchy. Equipped with Caviedes murals is not only the Café Fuentelarreyna, but the Chicote Bar, a beer cellar known as “Zum Lustigen Walfisch.” a drugstore in the Calle Sevilla, the bar of the Capitol Building, the Lyons Silk Shop, and the swank offices of International Telephone Co.

Elvira and, Tiberio, his prize-winning canvas (see cut) shows an embarrassed but happy pair of young South American Negroes, all dressed up in their Sunday best and perched primly on the edge of an emerald green sofa. Elvira has a gay wreath of pink poppies around her Dolly Vardon hat. Tiberio’s immaculate white linen suit is set off by a magnificent striped shirt.

Last week’s jury of award, with the exception of Carnegie Director Homer Saint Gaudens, consisted entirely of painters: Alexander Brook. John Steuart Curry and Jonas Lie of the U. S.; Colin Gill of London; Henrik Lund of Norway; and Belgium’s Isadore Opsomer. Pressed for reasons for choosing the Caviedes picture out of the 364 others exhibited, most jurymen thought that its shrewd color scheme was the deciding factor.

Second ($600) and third ($500) prizes went respectively to Gardenville, N. Y.’s Charles Burchfield for a large brownish watercolor of a logger’s shed in a gloomy cypress swamp in wintertime, and to Woodstock’s Henry Mattson for a seascape of wild waves and seagulls painted in fuzzy Cezannesque technique.

Last week’s show was not only the Institute’s 33rd, but marked the looth Anniversary of the birth of Founder Andrew Carnegie. For this anniversary exhibition 21 nations, more than ever before, were represented. It is an old Carnegie custom to ask gallery-goers to vote on their favorite canvases, and give a prize to the most popular picture at the exhibition’s close. From past experience critics dared not hazard which this might be. but found the following pictures worthy of special merit:

L’Echo Nostalgique, by Surrealist Salvador Dali. Painted with his usual brilliantly enameled color, his usual tight and finicky technique, this little panel shows a round hole and an angular pointed archway in an enormously thick wall. Beyond is a Spanish steeple and swinging from it a great bell that might be a hoopskirt doll. Another doll is skipping rope in the courtyard. Under the archway is something that might be an old root, or a nude man, listening.

Carnival Interlude is a crowded but interesting arrangement of Artist-Critic Guy Pène DuBois’ wooden figures. A blonde girl in striped trunks and pink brassiere has apparently passed out at a Greenwich Village revel. She is being carried from the room by a Mephisto in red tights and a gentleman in black court costume, while friends sympathize.