[The following excerpt is taken from the fourteenth chapter of D H Laven’s historic work-in-progress 'The Story of Forgotten Art’. In the introduction to this pioneering work he writes: ‘There is no such thing as forgotten art. There are only forgotten artists. And a hell of a lot of them too’. In this passage he looks at an unfortunate Spanish artist, whose great paintings quite literally never saw the light of day.]
Luck is no lady: it is the bastard child of the drooling she-monster and her incontinent husband; the festering cockroach under the cocktail cabinet; the hapless harbinger of despondency and doom. It may treat some people well, but many more are flung aside, like so many empty crisp packets hurtling along the dirty streets of modernity, pushed and pulled by the restless winds of change.
At the beginning of April in the year 1973, I was fortunate enough to find myself in New York, eager to witness the opening of an exhibition of work by the young Spanish painter Luis Reçagis. I had of course been aware of Reçagis for several years, but this was his first major exhibition – his so-called ‘breakthrough’. And I was just one amongst many who were extremely excited by the prospect. Previous work by Reçagis had promised much, but now – as an old lecturer of mine used to say (a little too often for his students’ liking) – ‘the time was as ripe as Aphrodite’s breasts’. Read the rest of this entry »
