A Las Vegas offer

 This lighthearted watercolor drawing is from the late sixties and has spend its life in Las Vegas

 This mother and child, pen and ink drawing was made in 1977. Tony often depicted these intimate scenes. here it is a young Mexican boy.

Two lovers in pen and ink...
The lady who contacted me wrote:
Hi, I hope you can help me sell my terrific Tony Mafia art work, If you know anyone collecting Tony Mafia please pass on my message and pictures. I'll send sizes if there is interest. Trusting the pictures arrive open as I'm sending them.  I must down size, and sell now.
 Thank you for your time and consideration .
sincerely Jeannie Ott

jott777@cox.net
702-450-3288
I'm located in Las Vegas

No salesperson

This is little Indian panting done in Chloride for a good friend of Tony living there. The family takes good care of the work and takes pride in the work. Regularly, I am asked whether I can help with selling a painting or whether I know the venues. I am good at many things but I am definitly not a salesperson. I do not know the market situation in the US and in Europe I learned that a person will fall in love with a piece and will have to have it at any price. Those are extremely rare and far between. The others who 'like', 'adore', even 'admire' Tony's work want you to give it away for free. I spend money on keeping the collection in good shape and for moving paintings for occasional shows. I want the work to be seen and hence the blog. I am no help at selling Tony's work. I wish all of you good luck and let me know the result of your efforts. Tony was a contrarian, so he skillfully maneuvered himself out of the mainstream until he became a a cult figure for a select band of followers. He is among the great painters of last century but never was part of the established art scene.

Las Vegas

The world is his palette, wrote the journalist. Actually that is quite right. Tony Mafia would use what he saw, felt, experienced and turn that in something 'transcendental', for lack of a better word. He would turn the particular into something general, sharing his deepest and most personal experiences with the experiences of others. Of course if you read the article by clicking on it, you'll see that it deals rather with Tony's life than doing a thorough analysis of his work. And yes, he lead a rich (rich in experiences that is) and hard life.

Double piece

Sing a feeling among the players is the title of this double piece of about 160 cm wide 108 cm high: two pieces of German etching paper. Tony's mam had been a very pretty lady, she had worked as a chorus girl and a dancer in Las Vegas, in the Old Pioneer, in the Thunderbird among others. They had a few good nights on the town together when he was younger. The lyrics around the drawing reads...... a memory I feel the mothering of the often painted mask of beauty hung, lirics of the night at the ever crowd of morning, evenings, night alone in dance. He painted this salute to his mother on October 22 1989. Of course the singer is kind of Tony himself with his favorite guitar, bought for him by Dale R., a long time friend.

Geese in flight

Sing the song a goose and red lips that say something in a space of nothing... Also September 1989. It must have been a sad song that was being sung.

September 4rd 1989: what was going on? A pretty lady, geese with open beaks and one goose almost mounting her, like in Leda and the swan from Greek Mythology... I don't know where he did this painting, in his Las Vegas period would be a safe bet.

Unremembered

I came by the pyramidic light to a masked sigh, a song by an open door to the pace of a drumbeat I forgot and on a wind move laying back I move to unremembered, that is the message on this painting of June 4 1989. The Luxor in Las Vegas might well have inspired the pyramids in the painting... Masks and harlequins, yes it must be a DL painting. Note the baby in the woman's arms.

Care

1989, seemingly in a sad lonely stretch of life. The text reads: Some alone in the of a time I am needing a caring but can their world come to every man who needs or can only a cold be a forever Here longing and need is expressed in gentle colors. Tony's writing on his work was a feature that often came back. You'll see more of that in later posts.

In the window they are

A series of paintings owned by DL will be shown here, put in the window so to speak. I thank him for this opportunity. This is a 1989 drawing, with the Arizona landscape in the background, an angry dog and indeed people looking in. This might be a Las Vegas painting when he still was in the La Brea Gallery or briefly after that. I seem to remember DL gave Tony a Shell gas card. So Tony was always mobile and could get milk and stuff at the gas stations...

Unicorn

Yesterdays post ended that 'the artist' was Tony's default personality. Here you see The Unicorn in the La Brea Gallery in Las Vegas with Tony and the owner of the gallery Ed. That show lead to long articles with plenty of color photographs in two Las Vegas newspapers: The Nevadan, September 28 1986 with as a title: Tony Mafia, A brilliant vagabond sets up in North Las Vegas and at the front Page: Artist Tony Mafia is fervent apostle of the abstract. The second is the Las Vegas Review Journal, September 30. August 28 also in 1986, the Las Vegas Sun ran a major article. It gives a decent biography and talks also about Tony's plans... In that period he became a kind of celebrity and got into trouble with the Minotaur Gallery about Salvador Dali's signature and about a Roy Nieman seascape... Those stories maybe are better left untold.

Joe's harlequin

I remember a time Tony came home from Europe, Antwerp, Belgium, Paris, the Stent, and maybe that little town that invited Clinton to play his saxophone. He was hungry and tired and really wanted to get back to LA. But first he wanted to spend a few days with us in Las Vegas. In a couple of days he put together a group of drawings and paintings. Then all too soon he was off, he left Las Vegas on a Greyhound bus and headed west. A few days later he returned with a big grin on his face and was driving his brand new red 4wd Samurai. Can you imagine that, spending a couple of hours on the floor doing what you love best (painting) and then trading it for a $10,000.00 vehicle? This was not the first time that I had seen Tony do something like that. I recall another time when I drove him to the Veteran’s Hosp in California so he could have surgery on his eyes. Tony returned the favor by inviting me to visit him and Annmarie in their house in Antwerp. I was broke and couldn’t afford to go so he and Annmarie paid my way. Thanks Annmarie. Another thing that Tony did for me was that he gave me a few paintings. I had found a couple of stretched pieces of canvas and gave them to him thinking he would paint something beautiful and sell it. But instead what he did was to give them back to me, finished pieces of fine art. Here is one is one of those for you to see.
Joe B.



I was always proud to have him as my uncle and happy we became good friends too.

Addendum: Tony liked his nephew too. He admired him as a fisherman. We fished Willow Beach together and Eagle Lake... but they quarreled about who was the best guitar player in the world. And the little town where Adolphe Sax came from is Dinant in the Ardennes...

Pigs and Pyramids

Some of Tony Mafia's work has been used as covers for cd's, tapes or records. He did some posters for musicians he performed with like Derol Adams and Norris Bennett. His drawings have also been used for a few book covers etc... The canvas Pigs and Pyramids became the cover of the second cd by Las Vegas hard rock band 'Private Jones'. It was lead singer, guitarist David Alderson who made the choice. Their first cd was Life on March. Tony had heard them perform in Vegas and liked their 'masculine attitude' ...