Portraits

Suddenly there would be this urge, having to do a portrait. For his portraits he chose important people like friends, a drunk in the bar, a lady of the ways, a neighbor, a child in the street. He didn't do many portraits on commission. I can think of Cher when she was sixteen, because her mother asked Tony and Tony Curtis' wife, who didn't like the painting. He told me he put a red nose on her and sold the painting immediately. What is shown here are portraits of a friend Dave Hunzinger from Chloride. He was an entomologist, jeweler and also a painter. Sometimes they worked in Dave's studio where Tony made him sit for several portraits. Here in charcoal you see the man the way he was every day and in color Tony painted him while praying on the sabbath. He called it Hooglied, basically Salomon's song. The jewish iconography interested Tony having lived in Amsterdam and in the Herentalse Straat in Antwerp in the Hassidic Jewish quarter. That was in 1968. Back in Los Angeles he did a series of beautiful etchings of street scenes with rabis and orthodox jews. They were sold in the Paul Olson Gallery for 125 $, a steep prize in those days...


With thanks to Reta Huntzinger for letting me post Dave's portraits.