Picture by Barbara.

Here is a photo of the drawing which I purchased while a student at the University of Miami in 1969.
I love it and have cherished it all these years.  It's a mother with her two babies.  Was this his wife and
children?
Enjoy,
Barb P

Thank you Barbara. By the way: did you ever meet Tony? If you did, do you have any memories. I like the drawing you send. It looks like a pen and ink drawing. In 1969 his little son Sören was a couple of month's old. When Tony and Anna Mors left for the USA on January 14, they left a lot of the bigger items for me to use for my daughter: I remember a plastic bath tub and some bits and pieces. It did help because nobody among us had money in those days. I don't know when Anna got pregnant with their daughter. I seem to remember she was  born in autumn in 1970. So Tony may have anticipated his daughter in this drawing. To me this drawing looks like a child with two dolls... See, art is always open to different readings. I have been told that the family has lived for a while in Miami. I think he did teach art there for a while. Not sure.

Thanks for sharing.

The Juggler

I fear I hear the Juggler
near the crying juggled
and all the time my world
is but a still yesterday

Tony
mixed media on German etching paper 1988- definitely a distorted self portrait... Is it about a love lost, a mess up in his life or fear and thus fear of death... Beauty drinks from deep and dark sources sometimes.

Bieke's painting and memories

When I was a young one, living in Antwerp, I fell in with a group of American expats. We all were drawn to The Folkcenter and The Matthijs, where Tony, Deroll Adams, and Norris held court. Those were the years when I took a little dip in the waters of folk singing myself but soon found out that I didn’t have the nerves to be a performer.

So, I crawled back into my pen.

Then I went and lived in England for a year. Tony went off somewhere. When I returned to Antwerp, he had come back as well. He would come and visit me and I would spend hours listening to his stories. He also played guitar for my baby son, who has grown into quite an accomplished guitarist.

One day, talking to Tony, I told him I was looking for a gift for my parents. The next time we met, he presented me with this painting of a mother and child. When I wanted to pay him, he refused the money. That was Tony: a golden heart, a wonderful painter, and a great story teller both with his guitar and with words.

I left for Canada, after that. He went god knows where. One day, about thirty years ago, I happened upon him as he was busking somewhere in Antwerp. Still Tony, still doing the same thing, still true to his inner voice. We talked for a while. Then a good ten years later, I was visiting Antwerp again and there he was again, at the same spot, busking. It wasn’t as if he had been there all that time. No, he had just come back from the States and I was there, as usual, for a short visit and on a rare occasion when I was not being driven by a family member.

It was one of those wonderful twists of fate.

This time he invited me to visit with him and, that evening, I reconnected with Annmarie, whom I hadn’t seen since those youthful days of the Folkcenter. I must say that I feel privileged to have known this man and to have called him my friend.

 And I am delighted to be able to visit with him on this blog.

Bieke Stengos (Cammaert)

Trail of tears

Nunna daul Isunyi

High mountans over the land of our fathers

were good to die

1838 Tears from my people

Singing "Amazig Grace" untill the end.

Saving the native future on the way to Oklahoma

Tony was partial Cherokee on his fathers side and was interested in all things Native American. His brother Bill found in Blythe,California a bunch of black and white pottery shards, older than black and white shards known before. He often felt unaccepted by other Native Americans, being rather fair skinned. He cherished his history however. This painting is a mixed medium: oil and pastels. He has done many other paintings about The trail of Tears. This wonderful drawing is in Antwerp, other pieces are in the USA.

Tony Mafia

Antwerpen 1983

Mother and child

Watercolor, Antwerp, 1983
Flowers and field...

Guapa de Anversa

Found where she was lost
Waiting for you
in tenderness and blue


Oil 1992, painted in the Kloosterstraat.

For a friend

Double piece on paper, mixed media.
Antwerp 1987.

can you see

Give me death and a dragon then my eyes can close,
I give this and all of yesterday careing.
Can you see.
Antwerp 1982
In that period Tony painted a lot of 'Punks'. Anything visually different would stimulate his mind and lead to new pictures. Death was a constant companion in his thoughts, not only because of his heart disease, but also because of his experience when Shanghai fell WW II being there with the merchant marine as an able bodied seaman.

Mexican indepence

That was title under which this picture of a double multi media drawing came to me. It is a pity I can't read the text, nor the date. It is a lovely piece, done in Antwerp, with oil and pastels on the typical heavy German paper he loved to use and of course a landscape in the background. There is one other oil on canvas with pyramids. You'll find it on the blog under pigs and pyramids.
Who knows more, I wrote yesterday and see, I was send a better picture and a tentative reading of the text.: So they sent there war and the venrion???? on our dislove. Lay next to lovers as the sky bled...

See the green snake of envy?

Antwerp Jews

These two etchings are from Antwerp when Tony Mafia lived in the Korte Herentalse straat in the Jewish quarter, in 1969, leaving Antwerp with his then wife Anna and their two children half of January. Tony Mafia was fascinated by the different appearances. I seem to remember there were four different etchings in all. I saw the smallest one, not included here, being priced at $ 125 in 1979 in his Gallery in Los Angeles. Sorry I forgot the name of the Gallery.
If you're interested contact: jott777@cox.net
702-450-3288
She is located in Las Vegas

Some one is selling a Tony Mafia at Campo en Campo

	auction lot : 175 MAFIA TONY De cyclus van het leven. Le cycle de la vie Gemengde techniek. Technique mixte/papier. . Get. Sig. 1983 3 x 106 x 77 cm 5000/6000 €
	previous lot	These tree drawings are called the Cycle of life.

Aldo's Memory

 The attached picture sets the clock back with 27 years and takes us to – probably-  the most favorite place in the world of any 5-year-old; the city fair.

Seated in Tony Maffia’s neck, I stare at yellow, plastic ducklings which are swimming in a water bassin of one of Antwerp’s “finest” carnival stands.

The prices, which we can gain by catching as many ducklings as possible, are extremely big and colorful , almost disproportional to what we are asked to do in exchange for receiving such a trophee.  

The ducklings have challenged us. We both feel the adrenaline rushing through our vains and, as we take a deep breath, we know which adventure lies ahead of us.

I guess this best gives words to what I thought of Tony. In my eyes he was never the person I see on the picture today; a white-haired man at least fifty years older than I was.

Rather, I saw him as a contemporary and an accomplice who was ready to discover the world with me. At the time, I was too young to relate my fellow adventurer Tony to ‘Tony Mafia’, the painter. He was extremely young at heart and always ready to share both my happiness and sorrow.

 As I grew older, I realized that Tony had captured our mutual spirit for discovery in his paintings.

To this day, every painting of Tony remains a discovery to me; in color, in pattern and story. Every time I look at one of Tony’s works, I notice something different. Every time I stare at his paintings, I see something new.

And, like the picture attached,  such a painting takes me back 27 years in time. Back to being that 5-year-old boy, ready to catch as many fair ducklings as he can.    

Aldo de Pape

Thank you so much Aldo!

Ken Post's Tony song

TONY MAFIA

HE WAS PAINTING                      

ON THE STREETS OF PARIS 

HENRI MATISSE PASSED HIS 

WAY IF YOU KEEP ON PAINTING 

LIKE THAT YOU LL BECOME A 

MASTER ONE DAY

AND HE DID BECOME A MASTER 

BUT  YOU ’ VE NEVER HEARD HIS

NAME HE MUST HAVE BEEN BORN

UNDER AN OBSCURE STAR

 BECAUSE THAT IS WHERE HE 

STAYED

WIH THE INTENSITY OF   A 

TOREADOR POISED WITH 

PALETTE AND BRUSH  DANCING 

IN FRONT OF THE CANVAS 

PAINTING WITH A LUSH TOUCH

MIGHT BE A LYRICAL PORTRAIT 

OR A COMPLEX STORY              

ONE DAY HE SPUN AROUND     

AND HE TOLD ANNMARIE 

REMEMBER ME 

BY MY BRUSH STROKES

HE LOVED A ROLLICKING DIRTY 

DITTY AND A PASSIONATE 

SPANISH STRUM 

IF YOU TOLD HIM

YOU LIKED HIS SHIRT HE’ D TAKE 

IT OFF AND GET A NEW ONE

I’ M IN THE COLLECTIONS OF 

SINATRA AND THE ENGLISH 

QUEEN HE’ D SAY THEN GO OUT

AND SING FOR HIS  SUPPER , 

BUSKING IN THE

REMAINS OF THE DAY

WHY SOME BECOME

RICH AND FAMOUS IS A 

CURIOUS THING TO SPECULATE 

WE ALL HAVE OUR INDIVIDUAL 

MAGNIFICENCE AND THEN

ITS UP TO FATE

SOME ARE BORN                         

IN THE BACK OF TAXI CABS 

OTHERS IN STABLES  

ON BALES OF HAY       

TONY WAS BORN              

ON A POOL TABLE IN LAS VEGAS 

WHEN HIS MAMA DROPPED HIM                        

BEHIND THE 8 BALL

BORN BETWEEN THE IRISH      

AND THE CHEROKEE              

LIVING BETWEEN THE DESERT 

OF ARIZONA AND THE SWAMP 

OF ANTWERPEN BELGIE

SCATTERING HIS SEED AND

SPATTERING HIS PAINTS 

 LIVING IN THE PRESENT 

WITHOUT RESTRAINTS

SO RUMORS OF TONY ’S  DEMISE 

CIRCULATED EVERY FEW YEARS 

BUT WHEN HE DIED IN ‘99 THE 

STORIES OF HIS EXPLOITS 

BROUGHT LAUGHTER AND TEARS

ANNMARIE TOOK HIM BACK TO

THE DESERT WHERE THEY 

LOWERED HIM INTO THE EARTH

THEN ALL WATCHED AS THE 

WIND PICKED UP , SWIRLED & 

CARRIED HIS SPIRIT BACK TO 

THE PLACE BEFORE HIS BIRTH

 Thank you Ken for your testimony.

Place de L'Ancienne Synagogue

Staying in a hotel at the Place de l'Ancienne Synagogue, I thought of some of Tony's quick scetches of people he saw in the streets. These are feltpen drawings with sure lines, probably stemming from the late sixties or very early seventies. Amsterdam or Antwerp may have inspired him to to these. He lived in Antwerp in the 'Lange Herentalse Straat', right in the Jewish orthodox quarter. He was intrigued by the hair and beard, the dress, the people...

The pond

THE POND


Morning in Hoboken. Light meets me again, the light
of long languid days at the pond near Lawrence Hall.
Oh, eight again in the orphanage of Chicago!
(My Cherokee daddy took a deadly drink of acid,
run-down by the taunting sneers about his lineage.)

All the time of the world. I and the boys never plan,
it all happens to us of itself, like one day
just being dropped here of itself. It is a tacit covenant:
misery we drown together in this secret pond
in the middle of the woods. All our senses sharp.

All gradations of green circle the glade where clouds
touch water, pink veils brought in by the wind.
I hear yesteryear’s sounds: the song of redwing and hummingbird
blending with our high voices of boys and the diving,
the breaking and splashing of water. We looking for water turtles.

Briefly eight again in the orphanage, but the screeching
of the seagulls brings me back. Winter in Hoboken.
Fog collars me now. Singularly touches me,
mutes colors and sounds. People hurry by, numbed and lost
deep in themselves. It is the restraint that strikes me here:

of the light hardly showing color, of the pigeon on the branch in the mist,
of nothing still stirring, of sound we gave a name but continues
to stutter strangely in the ears and, if at last the sun breaks through,
the shifting of shadow and light. It is my heart that is touched here.
Years and years beyond words.

Rose Vandewalle wrote this poem for the Demer Publication 'Black Sun' which you can order at Lulu. It is close to Tony's sentiments mixed with her own sensitivity. She knew Tony, owns work by him, has known the painting in my living room for a long time.

Horse dance

THE GENESIS OF CREATION
(The tearful eye of God)


It is always the power of the beast excelling human beings
and present in images we see with closed eyes
(sometimes blind to history). In a different place.
In the Camargue (wild horses). In dreams saved in scraps
in the head, the mind, where all eventually disappears.
But this horse that has broken free of the herd
I saw again in a man, a long time ago. He stood with his feather
headdress on a stage in Battery Park swaying his arms
screaming at 200,000 people - in the background
above him the Twin Towers emerging
as temporary gods - the eye of an invisible hurricane:
First they took our buffaloes
then our land
and what’s still left for us in territory
they build nuclear power plants!
The red stallion is the painter’s brush:
he who creates knows that this arises from what is destroyed,
he who writes knows that words have to perish
if they are to have new life.
They are like the flowers on giant cactuses, briefly blooming only.
I see a part of a painting and I see a part of what
is expressed: all Guernicas and Chattanoogas never passed.

Poem by Hannie Rouweler publisher of Black Sun. It wasn't about these horses she wrote the poem but this painting in oil hasn't been posted yet. It has been shown in Hoboken in the townhal..

I have seen you

I have felt you in the dawn
of tomorrow
schreef hij
en alleen
de tijd
zal weten
van ’t voorbijgaan
aan en van elkaar

Tijdelijkheid vastgelegd
voor de tijd begon
scheuren toe
gespeld
bij het vertragen
van het tijdsgewricht
toen wij bleven staan

ik noemde je zon
en ik was de maan
nu
zoek ik mijn eigen licht

In the early eighties Tony gave me this painting for ten years worth of birthdays. As you can tell by the Mohawks, the stained and torn clothed and the security pins it was in the punk period. Anything visually stimulating would end up on a painting. I wrote for 'Stroom' for 'Het laatste gedicht' this poem to go with it. Thanks again Tony.

Rain/Reign

It is a dark, rainy day in spring. In this flat country there are many rainy days. It changes the colors. Everything drips,all is watery. But even then there the bright red outline who reigns over the painting. There are the the far desert vistas and at least three gentle landscapes. This non linear but layered painting jumps between the different realities, different emotions. The thick cutout lines every time again isolate a separate reality, the other meaning, the other 'signifié'. The reading of Tony Mafia's painting remains open to the reader. he was a forceful man, but not an authoritarian painter. The painting was shown in Leohards Gallery

Giving the blue apple

Driving trough the North of France and seeing the yellow golden fields of flowering colza (rapeseed) reminded me of a 1995 larger (200 cm by 151 cm) oil Tony painted in Hoboken after one of many trips to Strasbourg probably late April, early May. The yellow sky was how he rendered these fields reaching to the horizon. The tree on the left with the blue apples is the tree of art and the person to the right is a forefather. The female figure already has a yellow apple while Tony wanted to give her a blue one. The painting is a double portrait in happy, whole times. It is currently displayed in a small show organized by 'De Blauwe Regen' in Antwerp.

The Art Critic

Tony Mafia didn’t like to talk about his work in a theoretical way. He also was not good at it. He disliked art critics and even more art journalists. In interviews almost all journalists preferred to talk about the man rather than about his work. They liked his work all right but were intrigued by the persona. Yet Tony often said not to put a too fine point on it: ”My work is better than I am. I just the asshole you know.” So it was through at lack of savvy, or a predilection of the person he spoke too that the narrative of Tony’s life was typified and framed as the life of the restless artist, from rags to riches and back again in no time, honest is his drive and work. Tony didn’t speak the language of critical discourse and didn’t have the words to explain why he did what he did. When, however, friends or strangers came to the house or gas station he would give a guided tour by all the work, showing the different elements, the composition, which always came from his hand and heart. He would point out colors and combinations of colors and how they work. Tony had a sense of the greatness of his work but felt he didn’t fit in the tradition of contemporary art although he considered himself part of that evolution. He was a cult painter for a small group of followers who collected and loved his work. Some viewers are troubled because they cannot discern the meaning nor the why of a painting, at least not rationally. With the heart, with feeling they would learn how to look at his work over time. With some this leads to frustration, with others to lifelong love.

One of the aspects I appreciate in TM’s work are the manifold openings into the layers of possible meanings. That way each person discovers a different painting. Yet one element almost always returns: Tony will give the viewers an opening, an escape route out of the painting, a place to rest, a silence in which to gather oneself. He is not an authoritarian painter imposing only one possible view of his work. Tony did not really plan out a painting by doing sketches or such. With one color of oil he might start out to map a canvas, yet nothing said he would follow the road on which he started out. When a piece of work became too decorative he did something to make it harder for himself and tried to do a really good painting. He was driven. Many of his old friends have testified to the fact that he needed to paint, that when he had no paper or canvas he would paint on anything: an old fence pulled out of the ground in the rain, tarps, doors, the wooden lid of a flour bin from a burned out Jewish bakery … Whatever he could lay his brush on and paint out the darkness of his soul on.

Being an outsider with tons of charisma he didn’t know how to play the field, nor how to get into the big museums. That brought sadness because Tony craved immortality for his work. He was a very visual man, but we should also remember him as a musician playing folk rock, blues, flamenco, blue grass on guitars, banjos and harmonicas. Everything he did had a rough edge, sometimes a feel of something unfinished, sometimes of a chaos that he tried to make sense of. I have work the size of a stamp and huge canvasses. He himself considered the way he dealt with composition and color as being abstract although in most of his work you will find human beings. Of most of his later work I know the history and so the canvasses become the theater on which he played out his life, sometimes our life, sometimes touching on the sacred or the secret of life and death.

Often, I would hear Tony play the guitar to his paintings. To him his best work was alive, said more than what he consciously had put in them. With Tony Mafia painting was knowledge of technique, experience and heart, a life hard lived that is condensed in his fast and intuitive brush strokes. Yes you will recognize Tony by his brush strokes.

The painting was in three shows.