Spain-Espania

Tony was in love with Spain.
He resonated with the vibrations of the duende of the flamenco.
He felt the sorrow of the civil war in his heart.
The bloody rain in this masterpiece is a witness of this sentiment.

Yet there us a sheepherder  with a staff, in Andalousia. Maybe it was also about caring. Dreaming about a kind woman. Missing Spain.
He lived for half a year in Casares, Andalusia. A strange town, where the three witches in black still brew their potions...

Antwerpen 1987

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)

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
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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...

Balle de Paris

Cheeta Jones wrote: My mom picked this painting up from a garage sale many years ago for two dollars. The garage sale was actually in Canada in southern Ontario. Yes , I have like the painting for a long time. I only began ton research Tony's work recently and seeing his other work has made me appreciate this painting even more. I like what you have done to create a collection of his paintings and stories...
Tumbleweed: This painting has the words Balle de Paris, probably he meant Belle de Paris seen the pretty ladies ready for a bal. It stems or refers to his Paris period in the sixties when he lived ina "chambre de bonne" after staying in Hôtel Belgique for a while. He roamed the streets, sold his work in the 'grand cafe's', knew the ladies from 'Les Halles' and the galleries in Rue St André des Arts:

All is changed
nothing stays the same
but the street
on which the changing
walk
until words
of past
hurt
for lack of a tomorrow

The fading star
of laughter lost
hears but the
murmur of memory
on rue St André des Arts
meeting Madame
Françoise Besnard

Tony Dean Mafia / Black Sun

TONY DEAN MAFIA
after a picture, for Annmarie Sauer

Subdued, as only death can make you,
still and in thought
so I see Tony sitting
in the sands of a white and far off past,
I who have not known him but
- ten years after his breath -
hear him talk, play music,
see him paint with colors of earth and blood
and a brush in which his heart still beats.

Tony, marked by the exhaust fumes of Chicago
and chained to the shots ringing in his name,
a James Dean with Cherokee in his veins:
the cowboy boots reminding me of
those of J.J. Jones, the Navajo who
in Monument Valley among timeless cathedrals
of red rock and whiffs of Marlboro smoke
forever passed on to me the sadness of his eyes.
Look: the galloping mummy of John Wayne !

I kneel for you Tony, and ask
- if only for a second -
to look into my eyes,
the gaze away from the white sand.
And to talk about Indians
and their trail of tears.

This poem by Willie Verhegghe is in fact made to the photograph of Tony you see when opening the blog.I added another picture, looking at the artisan guitar builder at Montellano, near Seville in Spain, who made 'The Crying Madonna' and the classical dark wooded guitar. He still looks away, but here he looks at something he enjoys. The poem is from the 'Black Sun', a publication, which you can order at Lulu.

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.

Bullfight

In 1969 he did this charcoal drawing. He painted there for the gallery of Françoise Besnard. That was a few years after Tony Mafia had spend several months in Casares in Andalusia. His stay there has deeply influenced his later work. We revisited Casares in the late nineties and the town was eerie to say the least. Here the human protagonists of a bullfight is shown.

The need

The need to draw, to paint would suddenly grip Tony. Pen and ink, felt pens, pencil anything would do. I think it was because when the hand is drawing, it is the hand thinking and not the head. The need to draw brought relief from his inner turmoil.The top drawing was probably done '66/'67 in Amsterdam.

Roadies

It is hard to blog when I am on the road. Courtesy of Joe you see Tony here walking away in a small town in Germany. Tony spoke a smattering of German, enough to get by. During his Air Force days he was stationed near Munich. He got to restore murals in chapels and churches and learned the needed techniques. He kept a love for things German, also Sauerkraut and Bratwurst...

red times of some

This photograph catches the essentials of this painting: the embrace and just a few words: red times of some and possessions... There is a large oil where the male figure is similar, so I would place this drawing in Veyle, Denmark late sixties, seventy... It was all love and peace in those years, no possessions... Life must have been good, yet hard.

Lady of Time

This 1975 pen and ink drawing done in LA, reminds me of a meeting Tony had in Antwerp. An old man approached Tony, it must have been 1997, and said I knew you as a kid. Tony replied that wasn't possible since he wasn't from Antwerp. But it turned out that the old man when Tony when he was 16, having missed his ship out had shown him the town. The good parts, the bombed out parts. They had a few drinks together told each other an appropriate version of their life and went on. Tony was happy to have met this old man from another time. So now I wonder who the Lady of time was and what she reminded him of doing the drawing.

Children of a clown time

This is the oldest work I have by Tony Mafia. First we knew him as a singer/busker in Antwerp. He knew how to seduce a guitar. In August 1968 we met him with his wife and young son in the market. He invited us over and we admired his drawings. That was the day of the beginning of a collection. This is a mixed medium. The text reads: The children of a clown time stand alone to remove the false, to grab at any bud or blossom, to stay his weight, some to compare and to find one or the other of a less or unfulfilled promise, still alone to sit and dream of a tomorrow spring.

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.

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.

Prison

Life never seems to have been easy for Tony. In 1965 he got stranded in Denmark on route to Sweden where his agent was iring him some money for work he had send him. In a park in Copenhagen he did a drawing. Somebody admired it, Tony sold it and got busted for 'selling a drawing without a licence and having insufficient funds. He was in Jail for six month, in solitary confinement. I guess he gave his opinion a bit loudly about the situation. When he finally appeared they gave him a fine which obviously he could. So they allowed him to sell his beautiful old banjo to the guard who had coveted it from the moment he laid eyes on it... He said this drawing he smuggled out of the prison. he went straight to Paris where he met his later wife.

Recurent themes

Having lived in Amsterdam and Antwerp where there is a large Hasidim population, Tony was captured by their traditional way of dressing. In Antwerp they are very visible and have a large influence in the diamond trade and yes, Tony loved his diamonds. Here you see two drawings from the early 70's: one in stylized lines and the other in delicate colors, probably from the same period as the drawings in the last post... Just showing how different he would use several techniques.

balloons

Doing these easy, romantic, saccharine drawings came easy to Tony. These are prints: the signature is also in ink which he would never do. These little drawings kept him afloat in hard times selling them for a couple of dollars and selling enough to pay the rent. He would go from bar to bar in the red light district in Antwerp, Paris, Amsterdam... His folder would be filled with real drawings and these prints and he would hope that the real good work could find a loving home. People loved these sweet nothings, yet good drawings as he himself considered them. Later, as a mature painter, often when he did something too easy he would change it going from the slick to the rough and real feelings.

Spain

Tony loved Spain, all aspects of it Flamenco, the country side and the bullfights. The colors of the costume and the high octane drama was probably what drew him to portray again and again the bulls, matadors and toreadors. You'll note the costumes are right. He knew because he went with Betty Ford a matadora for a while. They lived in Mexico for a while where she was touring. He left her when she turned out to be 'braver' than he was when one night in Mexico city some bandits burgled their house and she went after them with her sword. From the dentists collection. Sad eyes are a specialty of Tony...