Enrico Donati - Master of the Unplanned and Accidental in Art

Writer's Note: This is an archived article of an interview I did with Enrico Donati, approximately twelve years ago, at his home and studio in New Canaan, Connecticut. He is known as the "last living Surrealist artist." This story was published in the Times-Mirror Newspapers syndicate.




Enrico Donati, 1934
Courtesy of Google Images

             On a bright fall day, Enrico Donati, painter, sculptor and master of the “unplanned and accidental in art,’’ and subject of the newly-published “Enrico Donati: Surrealism and Beyond” by Theodore Wolff, (Hudson Hills Press, Inc.) sits relaxing in his bright yellow living room in his house on a hill overlooking the woods of New Canaan, Connecticut.

            The artist’s older and more recent paintings, kachina dolls collected during a Southwest trip in the 1930’s, two impish table-top sculptures given to him by Avant Garde artist Niki de St. Phalle, as well as a surreal, life-sized figure of a sheepdog loudly proclaim the artist as collector and add to the comfortable, yet elegant ambiance of the room.

            Donati has owned the cozy, sprawling ranch home for over thirty years and readily admits his preference for the weekend serenity of the Connecticut landscape over the art-scene Hamptons of his younger years. He and second wife Del, a graphic designer, also maintain a Central Park West apartment in New York City.

            His work has been exhibited at venues throughout the world, including the Zabriskie Galleries in New York and Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Guggenheim Museum and the Biennales in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Venice, Italy.

            Today he is dressed in his favorite black. A pipe juts from his mouth and he wears a cowboy hat from his collection of haberdashery which adorns his nearby studio walls, interspersed with paintings past and present, tribal wooden masks and various objets d’ art. A model of his famous “Fist,’’ a larger-than-life bronze hand with two glass eyes sits nearby, along with a photograph of Andre Breton, the poet and grandmaster of Surrealism, admiring the work at the 1947 International du Surrealisme in Paris, Surrealism’s last big hurrah.

Fist by Enrico Donati
Sculpture with glass eyes

            Donati had a long and distinguished career which took him from near-poverty in the ateliers of Paris to the post World War II heyday of the New York art scene, shared with fellow European emigres. He still paints or sculpts each day, giving credence to his motto that “before the age of 60, do what you like, but after you reach 60, work!’’ He adds, smiling widely, “I work days, nights, weekends, even New Year’s Eve.”

            Right now, with a twinkle in his eyes worthy of Kris Kringle himself, he delights in talking about the present, his three grown daughters, Marina, Sylviane and Alyssa; an actress, an artist and a writer, and then slips back into reminiscing about the past, sharing anecdotes about his friends and fellow artists, Marcel Duchamp, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Joan Miro and Yves Tanguy.

           

          Donati’s life-journey has been paved with exploration and discovery. Born in 1909 in Milan, Italy to Federico, a distinguished scholar and Janna, a talented painter, his main interest was playing the piano and composing music. He studied music at the Milan Conservatory of Music, then moved to Paris with his first wife Claire.

            When he discovered he couldn’t make a living from his music, he decided to try art and attended art school in Paris before his first visit to America in 1934. “I wanted to meet the Indians,’’ he recalls, “the real Americans.’’

            His travels took him to reservations from Santa Fe to Alaska to Canada, where he lived with Hopis, Zunis, Apaches and Eskimos. He bartered Venetian beads, feathers from European pheasants and Swiss army knives and returned to New York with the foundations of his collection of kachina dolls and masks. “I met the Indians,’’ he says, “and now I wanted to meet the people of New York.’’



Tower of the Optimist
Creation of the Sun
oil on canvas, 1948



            In New York, he tried working at commercial art and engraving, but became disenchanted with the work and in 1936, returned to Paris for further art studies. With the advent of World War II, the Donatis, now a family of four, returned to New York, a city which was also home for many European painters and sculptors.

            It was here that he explored his fascination for the process of regeneration, “the passage from life, through death, into life again, that occurs regularly in nature, art and myth.’’ He set out to paint his feelings about the mythological mandragora root (or mandrake as it is generally called) and its transformative capabilites. exploring the mysteries of life, death and the creative process.

            In 1942, he met Camilo Egas, the co-director of the gallery at Manhattan’s New School for Social Research. Egas exhited Donati’s works in the gallery where Lionello Venturi, the art historian saw the show and introduced Donati to Andre Breton who was also living in New York.“I was just a kid...’’ Donati recalls. “But Beton accepted me into the Surrealist movement and suddently I was surrounded by giants -- Max Ernst, Tanguy, who lived in Woodbury, Connecticut, Marcel Duchamp, all of the big guys.’’



Enrico Donati at the age of 98,
The MH de Young Memorial Museum
Courtesy of Google Images

             Mr. Donati’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Art in Houston and the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels.

                  

Note: Enrico Donati passed on April 25, 2008, at the age of 99. He is remembered as the last living Surrealist artist.     



Fire In New Canaan II, 1991