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!

AUGUST 4, 1931 and now

At an artist evening at our old place in Hoboken probably in 1998 this picture was taken. Today would is a good day to celebrate his life since it is his birthday... Remember him!

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

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..