ART SCENE

Anthony Quinn in his Bristol, RI studio in the mid 1990s. (Photo courtesy Katherine Quinn)

Could he possibly have been as good an actor as he was an artist? Of course, that is the inverse of the question most of us would ask about Anthony Quinn. In my view, at least, he was a protean talent in both.

The late Hollywood legend, known for bravura film characterizations such as “Zorba the Greek” and dozens of others over a 65-year career, was just as accomplished a painter and sculptor. This summer, you have a chance to see his work on display at Hammetts Hotel in downtown Newport. Paintings, unique, cubist-inspired painted wood wall hangings, undulating abstract sculptures and drawings adorn a hallway just off the hotel’s lobby.

The exhibit, up through September was arranged by Newporter Sam Bolton and Quinn’s widow, Katherine, as a way of calling attention to the work but also to the Anthony Quinn Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes art education in schools and awards scholarships to help talented students pursue their artistic careers.

Quinn spent his last years living quietly in Bristol, where his widow still resides. She has turned a portion of her home into a gallery tribute to his artwork and his art collection, which itself is impressive. Through the foundation, she has kept Quinn’s artistic spirit alive, just as his films keep his acting spirit alive.

“ Lady from Crete,” wood assemblage painted with mixed media, 1984. (Photos by Sam Bolton)

At the hotel, you can glimpse a small sample of the irony behind Quinn’s Academy Award-winning career. While he effectively “fell into” an acting career, he wanted to be a visual artist from a very young age. At his Bristol residence, the astonishing volume of Quinn’s paintings, drawings, sculpture and sketches emphasizes the irony.

As a teenager, he won an award that allowed him to meet another exceptional man, architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Katherine tells the story of Wright encouraging Quinn to correct a speech impediment that initially required surgery to his tongue. The architect praised Quinn’s drawing, but said he needed to take care of the impediment and recommended acting school.

“Metropole,” wood assemblage painted with mixed media (2), 1986.

Quinn volunteered to work as a janitor at a youth theatre if he could watch the classes and the rehearsals. This resulted in an appearance in his first stage play when he was asked to fill in for a student who had stage fright.

“He kept this playbill,” Katherine says as she delicately thumbs through the pages, of the Noel Coward comedy. “He made notations here and there for lines he wanted to change. Imagine, a teenager in his first play doing that with Noel Coward.”

On the back page of the playbill, Quinn drew a tiny horse in pencil. Katherine says he continued doodling throughout his acting career, particularly during the extended downtime of filming.

He built from small sketches the larger works he would paint and sculpt. The grounds of his home are adorned with Quinn’s large sculptures, and stone and metal reliefs. Inside several buildings on the grounds are thousands of drawings, paintings, sculptures and maquettes for monumental works.

Untitled, wood assemblage painted with mixed media, 1975.

Katherine said Quinn sought Wright’s advice about taking a film acting job. “Wright asked how much they were going to pay him,” she said. “Tony told him, and Wright said it was much more than he would pay Tony for working as an architect. He basically said, ‘Go make the film.’”

Quinn, born in Mexico in 1915, passed away in 2001. Even considering his more than seven decades of making art, the amount of work he created is amazing. Clearly, he was a soul who needed to stay busy and whose mind was working all the time.

His father, who gave him his first set of paints, died when Quinn was 11. His family emigrated to Los Angeles, and Quinn had to quit school after the 10th grade to help support his mother, sister and grandmother.

Although he took art lessons as a young man in Chicago when he was appearing in a stage production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” he was largely self-taught and self-educated. A voracious reader of books about everything from philosophy and history to art and science, Quinn’s collection numbers in the thousands. “When he was working on a film, he was either reading or sketching,” Katherine said.

Quinn’s Bristol , R.I. studio, above and left. (Photos by Sam Bolton)

The exhibit at Hammetts Hotel barely scratches the surface of his art, though you can see the primary inspirations he drew from cubist painting, free-flowing abstraction reminiscent of Matisse and Miro, Henry Moore’s modernist sculpture, African and primitive art.

His collection of other artists’ work, some of which lives with Katherine, reveals his inspiration, but his own work is his own work. His vision broadly took in the primitive and the modern, the Latin and the European, all of it alive with brilliant color.

The Anthony Quinn Foundation, managed by his widow and a board of directors, has sponsored exhibitions over the years, including a three-year traveling show comprised of Quinn’s work and samples from his collection. His work has been shown all over the country and in Europe.

 

While the exhibitions draw attention to Quinn as an artist, their dual purpose is to raise awareness of the foundation and its efforts to support high school students in pursuit of their artistic careers. The foundation has awarded close to 120 scholarships since it started in 2011, and it has augmented that with fellowship support for some of the scholarship recipients who are working on major projects.

“Our idea for the scholarship program, which was suggested by board member Tom Roberts, was to help students pursue their passion in the way that Tony did,” Katherine said. “He grew up poor, but he had talent and a deep desire to become an artist. We believe in the value of arts education for all children, and we are committed to helping with that as much as we can. The foundation honors his legacy and shares his artwork.”

You can learn more about the Anthony Quinn Foundation at aqfoundation.org. g

Untitled sculpture.

After retiring this year from 22 years of teaching journalism at the University of Rhode Island, John Pantalone, the founding editor of Newport This Week, is happy to be writing for the paper again.