Enrico Donati
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
I am not sure what I am more sad about; his passing, or the fact that it happened in April and I am just learning about it the passing of Enrico Donati, who was the last surviving Surrealist.
NY Times Obit ~ April 26.
He apparently was in a taxi-cab accident last July which contributed to his death. This is disheartening to me as I actually me him last July during his sojourn to San Francisco for the DeYoung exhibit. He was having a huge retrospective and being newly represented by Weinstein Gallery, where I bought one of his later pieces. There was a gala dinner held at the DeYoung on the 17th of July and it must have been shortly after that he returned to New York and was in the accident. The picture below is our second meeting — I have another pic that is a print-only of me holding the artwork, Arrival of Alyssa, standing next to Donati at a smaller, private reception the night before the DeYoung dinner.
I am so oddly depressed and crying as I write this, but so happy I got to meet him and thrilled to have the opportunity to talk (a little) about his days with Breton and Duchamp. He was incredibly kind with still a sparkle in his eye and a quick wit despite some hindered movement in his legs. The piece I acquired was from the 1960s and came from a time where he worked with multi-media in Abstract Expressionism; utilizing ground sand, coffee grounds, and “stuff from his vacuum cleaner.”
