Torero

Dear Attila, thank you for your questions about Tony Mafia and this particular painting. From your description of the support (a kind of board with canvas on one side) for the painting I gather that he painted it in the United States. Probably in Los Angeles, California, in a period that he didn't have a real canvas and was a strugling artist without funds. It definitely is an original and a fairly early work I think, based on the way it is painted. I would say it is after his stay in Casares in Spain. The painting seems to be in good condition. That, the subject, also the size decides the value. A collector of Tony Mafia's paintings or a bullfight lover, might want to spend some money on this canvas. Bullfights were certainly a recurrent theme in his work. He loved the flamboyance and the vibrant colors, the life and death issues dealt with through beauty and ritual. I would put a 5.000 $ price for a particular sale. It may take a while however to find the person who would fall in love with the painting and willing to invest his money in Tony's work. I know for a fact that after the stay in Casares he had a show in Rue St. André des Arts in Paris with Spanish and bullfight paintings and that the show sold out. I heard it a couple of years ago from the Gallery owner Madame Besnard. So it might be a good thing for you.

Painters at play

If you look well at this painting you'll see an assortment of painters in the guise of harlequins and magi. They hold the pallet, and have each a brush tipped with a different color. They paint the spring with gentle color. I think often Tony would have liked to repaint a better, prettier world than the one he saw. Although on other days he was in the best of all possibles worlds. That is dichotomy in a fertile mind.

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 sater

Tony's nephew Joe:
The painting was done in North Las Vegas 1986. I bought it from Ed Morgan (my step dad) a few years ago. He had it in a trailer that was not very tall so the top was rolled, folded over and forced to fit. That put a crease across the top and caused some damage but mostly it is in good shape.
I think it's the devil stealing a woman from that poor guy who looks like he has been hypnotized. If all's fair in love and war then I think this is a painting about Love. Sorry I'm not much of a critic when it comes to art and my thoughts. I will say this is one of those paintings that the more I looked at it the more I liked it.
Note to Joe: it is Greek mythology; Pan with the flute and a very light haired Sater to boot. It must be an idealized self-portrait of Tony... I love the wide open space of the landscape. I think it was shown in the La Brea Gallery in Las Vegas.

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.

The Cocktail Party

it is an early spring day, a perfect day for a garden party like this one. The party is a bit crowded to my taste but I think Tony enjoyed painting it. I like the blue of the sky and the white clouds and the forever symbolic Martini glass. A fun moment in Hoboken in 1999. It is hanging in the small show at the East Castle in Antwerp.

October 1983

You find here two newspaper clippings and the price list from the 1983 exhibition in Gallery Atrium. He had a big sculpting there that was the focal point in Café De Linde on the South side of Antwerp. then the sculpting moved to a castle in Portugal. The paintings in that time were big, reaching to the floor, being installations, often with a book added... I don't remember what or if he sold. The revues at least were great, loving Tony Mafia and his work.

Flyer

Tony's work keeps touching people's hearts. This is the flyer for an upcoming music and poetry event, which is the end of year of a series of house concerts. And loving his work so much, a small house exhibition is also planned by the enthusiastic organizer. The improvising musicians are awesome, if you're not too far away come and join the festivities. Five instruments, one voice and a poet reading while Tony's work is projected on the wall.

Poison

In 1998 there was a major flood in Antwerp and surroundings and our address having been Lageweg 431 in Hoboken we were thoroughly flooded out. Tony saved the two dogs floating on a chair after coming home from the hospital and the factory must have opened some lines which they shouldn't have. The result was a poisonous slme, sludge clearly visible after pouring out od the factory. This paper was tainted by it and Tony painted the appropriate subject on it: Poison. He cared about nature, was a fisherman and wanted the water to be clean. He wasn't the best recycler though. He also loved his cars, the excuse being his getting out of breath when walking too far. This piece was in the retrospective of Hoboken 'A brush'.

Out of step with the band

Tony and I felt usually out of step, out of sync with the two worlds we were living in. I think that Obama Barack's victory would have really pleased Tony Mafia. He was a democrat at heart and a member of the party and had been at the first march between Selma en Montgomery. He told me about the German shepherds chasing the people. I wonder what he would have painted about this feeling of relief. I am sure he would feel even more patiotic now. The painting from 1997 was shown in Leonhard's and Lineart in 1998.

Gebo

In the spring of 1971 Tony Mafia had an exhibition in Gebo Gallery in Antwerp. The picture on the invitation was a larger canvas with a boy in the foreground. I read it as a Native American family contemplating the plain and the river. Lots of grays and blues.

Zandvoort

The drawing is on a monoprint, something Tony used to do in the late sixties and sometimes when he felt like it. The drawing is from 69 and the invitation from a show of almost a month in Holland in 68.

Going Dutch

These are two invitations from the period Tony mafia lived in Holland with his then family, hence the mother and child. The second invitation is for a show on the Rosengracht in Amsterdam in the Karel Ruiter Gallery. It states that Tony's work is to be found in different collections among others in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. So this corroborates Tony's story.

Steve Stein Gallery

This great oil with horses and nudes has been shown in Steve Stein's Gallery in Los Angeles. It is more European in style, breaking up the big canvas in smaller paintings that are incorporated in the total composition. When I asked him one day why he did that Tony answered: I won't have the time to paint them all...

Action

Here you see Tony Mafia in action in Hoboken. I am showing three pictures because he uses pencil, pastel oil crayons and oil: that is what I mean when I state that a drawing is mixed media. The yellow angel was shown in Leonhard's Fine Arts Gallery in Braschaat. The pictures were taken 1998 by his friend DL. Note the writing in pencil around the second drawing and how different the colors are. He often had two drawings going and an oil painting at the same time, sometimes creating totally different paintings with the same colors, sometimes using different forms and styles. He did what he felt was needed to get a good result.

Galerie Françoise Besnard

This exhibition was held in 1966 after spending time in Casares and bringing down the work he had created there. We met Madame Besnard one day in Paris while Tony was showing me the old galleries where he showed. Listening to the two of them speak it was clear that Tony's story that they sold out the show was true. She said: We did well then. I still have two of your paintings in my living room. All the stories told me and having been able to check out a few of them, makes me think that all he told was a always a nice story, yet always based on some truth.

Press article

This is how Tony looked in th early seventies. The article about the show in Gebo Gallery in 1971 in Antwerp is titled Tony Mafia painter and poet. In that period with Ann he did a lo of mother and child drawings which the article reproduces here.


He also wrote around most drawings. At the show every one of those drawings had a card with the English and Dutch text.

The press

For those who read Danish, an article from 1970. You'll find some of the names of famous owners of Tony's work and some information about his life and work. Tony had a dual relationship with the press: he enjoyed the attention but felt they should not write about the man -although he was flattered and needed to be liked- but the articles should be about the work. As you can tell in full Vietnam war, he did drawings about peace and never soft on his words his message still is: Fuck Hate!

Casares Spain

Doug, our collecting fiend, had the foresights years ago to take a lot of pictures. He send 13 cd-roms on which he had transfered the negatives of those times. You'll get a lot of young Tony's work. I start out with a fine pen and ink drawing from 1966. The oldest drawing I have found up to now. He stayed for six months in Casares in Andalucia, Spain painting drawing and putting a show together in the rue Saint Honoré des Arts for the gallery of Madame Besnard. Casares is like on the drawing: the church on top with the cemetery around it and the field fertilized by the rains under the overhanging cliff... He sold out the show: true! I heard Tony and Madame Besnard speak about in when they met again in Paris early 1990's. She had two paintings of Tony in her living room... He revisited Casares often in his paintings. Even the big painting in the European Parliament 'The tearful eye of god' is inspired by his stay in Spain that long ago.