Phil Kelly

Amarillo Anáhuac

I'm very sad to learn that my friend Phil Kelly passed away last night in Mexico City, the city he loved and that loved him back. Phil, who was originally from Ireland,  painted his adopted city with wit and verve. Not many local painters train their eyes on the urban jumble that is Mexico City; not many people can see the beauty beneath the grime, but Phil did. He could look at its ugliest buildings, its most impossibly trafficked intersections, its mustiest cantinas, and bring them to life with loose but precise strokes and an amazing use of color: witty, generous, expressive, and never overwhelming. He could distill the essence of a place and fill it with light. His paintings of Mexico City, Oaxaca and other cities afford you a totally new way of looking at places that you recognize, even if you've never been there.

I am very lucky to have a Phil Kelly, a generous gift from Mr. Ex-Enchilada. It's an oil painting of Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City's version of the Champs Elysees.
In Phil's hands, the avenue is a vertiginous river of cars, an orange swath of paint, stubborn blue palm trees billowing in the exhaust wind, and what I most love about it, a sky the color of clotted cream, a classic Mexico City sky on those days where your throat itches and your eyes water. Rising in the middle of this wide panorama is the Monument to the Independence, El Ángel, almost dwarfed by all that crazy motion around it, but still shining over the fierce metropolis like a little fairy.

I saw Phil last January in Mexico City. I parked myself at the Xel-Ha and let people know I was there (something you can do at the cantinas of Mexico City, where there is always one more chair to add to any table). Not many came but I was happily surprised when Phil arrived with his indomitable wife Ruth. Sweetly, he came bearing  gifts for my birthday. A lovely little etching and a lovely little book with some of his paintings of Mexico.

El Angel

Circuito de Noche

León Condesa Jardín Principal

Circuito

I met Phil when I was in my twenties and moving out of my parents' house to go live in la Condesa (in those days it was full of old Jews and new artists, and gracefully bereft of enforced hipness). I moved into Phil's bedroom in an old apartment building in Campeche Street. Phil moved out to a bigger place where he had much more room to paint, and if I'm not mistaken, which was his home and studio until last night.
Phil had a wicked sense of humor and he was a lovely man. I'm very sad that he is gone. But we are lucky that he left behind all that color, all that incredible art.

Parnell Square, Dublin, I believe

If this isn't Paris, I don't know what is. 

Mexico City, no doubt.

Portrait of My Dad...

...by Diego Rivera. You can read the story of how this happened here.

Thanks to my Small Enchilado Brother in Law for sending me the picture.

Diego Rivera and My Dad

Family lore has it that Diego Rivera asked my dad about how to write Hebrew letters for his mural Man Controlling The Universe which is on the second floor of the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. Apparently, my dad, all of 9 years old, would come and watch him paint. They became friends.

The mural is from 1934. If you look on the right bottom side of the mural, where the red banner is, this is what you'll see, sadly fading today:

Trotsky, Marx and Engels with the banner of the IV International Socialist Congress.
I took this photo last Friday.  Look closer:

 

In Yiddish:  Arbeter fun ale lender fareinikt aich in Fertn Internatzionale Sotzializt.

Workers of the world unite in the Fourth International Socialist.

Makes sense, cause my Dad didn't speak Hebrew but he spoke Yiddish.

Diego gave my dad a pencil portrait sketch of his young likeness. It is signed and dedicated, "a mi amigo Aarón Maam, Diego Rivera". That's not how we spell our last name, but never mind. Apparently my dad folded it and put it in his pocket. Years later my mom ironed it and they had it framed. It's the head of a smiling boy, with thin hair, and almond shaped clear eyes. It doesn't look anything like my dad, but it does look a lot like my nephew Daniel. Go figure. 

 

My dad was friends with Diego until the fifties, when he got very disenchanted with Stalin and his murderous anti-intellectual, anti-Semitic and inhuman politics. Diego adored Stalin regardless, and he and my Dad never spoke again.

Pedro Friedeberg

At the Camino Real Hotel in Mexico city there is a mural by this Mexican artist (born in Italy, he escaped Mussolini with his mother when he was a child), that always fascinated me when I was a little girl. It was kinda of psychedelic but very geometric. Fun and gorgeous. Super extra groovy. Friedeberg was mostly known for the invention of this:

 

The hand chair, which according to the current retrospective of his art at Bellas Artes, was coveted by hip seventies icons such as Yul Brynner and Roman Polanski. Friedeberg was not only a late surrealist but a mischievous wit and he said (and I paraphrase) that it was amazing to him that he became famous for a lazy, vulgar piece of work that was actually built by a carpenter, but his other work which consumed hours of his time, nobody paid any mind to. Well, here is some of it:

 

 

Project for the Remodeling of Toluca (he originally studied architecture)

 

This one is called Vagina Dentata

And these are his interpretations of the Kabbalah tree. 

As you can see, he combines esoteric influences with op art and surrealism. Back in the day when there was no Adobe Illustrator. The titles of his works are very funny.

 

 

He was much a product of his time, but I think his art is still extremely cool today. 

The guy is still around and looks like he's having fun.