Art: Well-Groomed Africa

Well-Groomed Africa One of the brightest little art shows in Manhattan this week is the work of a Hollywood dress designer. But Gilbert Adrian, 48, is also a good man with a paintbrush, and after a six-week tour of Africa with his wife, Janet Gaynor, he has 19 oils to show for it.

Adrian’s Africa is as well-groomed and chic as an Adrian dress collection. Under pastel skies, orderly Daliesque vistas stretch away toward infinity. Stilt-limbed natives cavort decoratively with zebras and elephants, or sit among delicate foliage, holding snakes that have skins like fashionable dress prints.

An Africa fan from boyhood, Artist Adrian painted many an imaginary African scene before he ever laid eyes on the continent. In 1949 he and his wife took a motor trip through the Sudan, Kenya and the Belgian Congo, “to see if my African dream were true.” Bumping over 4,000 miles of trails, he decided that he had been right in the main. But he picked up a lot of new ideas. At home, working from notes and memory, he turned out the current show’s canvases in a year and a half.

Adrian plans to go right on painting “nothing but Africa.” His next project: a foraging trip in French Equatorial Africa.