Surrealist

A small group of strange paintings attracted critics to Manhattan's Balzac Galleries last week. They were the work of a bald, naturalized Frenchman named Jean Crotti. Painter Crotti is the most eminent exponent of a school of art known as surrealism.

Surrealists do not believe in thought. They paint subjectively, they insist. They slap paint on canvas to express not what they see but what they feel. Paris has about 20 or 30 recognized surrealists, all anxious to claim Pablo Picasso as one of them for his abstractions. Painter Picasso has persistently declined the honor, insists that there is nothing extemporaneous about his work, that it is all elaborately thought out in advance.

About surrealism there is a certain lunatic logic which appeals to the precise French mind. Everyone knows that most great painters did not consciously strive for all the shades of significance which plodding German critics like to read into their works. They just painted. It is therefore the surrealists' premise that all that is necessary to produce art is to stand in front of a canvas with a wet brush in your hand and give your emotions a free rein. Surrealist Crotti is so certain of the value of his products that he rejects oil paint as too impermanent, works only in lacquer. All his colors are especially ground for him with varnish or turpentine as a base.

Actually M. Crotti is not an ineffective theorist on canvas. Born in Switzerland 51 years ago, he does not disdain a knowledge of drawing. One canvas, which looks like two Scots fighting with bolts of tartan but is labelled Fishermen, is an interesting arrangement of colors. Lorenzo, a rapidly sketched portrait of a small surly boy with a face like a baboon, stops and holds most observers.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.