THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 16, 1995 TAG: 9511160536
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
THE SUN SETS on a snowy day in Aumetz. A dirt road curves around the cluster of farm buildings, as if to hug them closely. Along the path's edge, a gnarled old tree rages at the bitter air.
In Theo Wildanger's painted world, everything is alive and vibrant.
The 1969 work is among more than 30 paintings and sculptures by Wildanger that go on view today at 1812 Arctic: A Gallery of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach. On hand tonight at a free reception will be Catherine Kincaid, the artist's daughter, and her husband, Jim, the WVEC-TV news anchor.
Theo Wildanger (pronounced TAY-oh vill-don-JHAY) died in 1989 at age 84. The farmhouse picture was a sublime vision plucked from the artist's unthinkably rough childhood.
Aumetz is a small village in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, where Wildanger grew up the youngest of 13 children born to an itinerant miner. At age 5, he was herding cows for food. A few years later, he was spending long days digging for ore in the cramped mines, which is where he lost his right pinkie finger in an accident.
From those destitute beginnings, Wildanger married an aristocratic girl from Luxembourg and took her to Paris, where they lived the bohemian life. There, he worked for art dealers. Years later, he started his own gallery in Brussels.
In 1977, he moved to Elam, Va., a tiny hamlet in rural Prince Edward County. He took up residence in the Kincaids' country home, often the setting for one of Jim Kincaid's reflective essays that are aired on WVEC.
It was at Elam that Wildanger began pouring a lifetime of collected feelings and experiences into art.
For all the hard things he had seen in his life, in his art ``he was mainly concerned with beauty,'' said his daughter. ``He'd say, `Jim, I've done a beauty thing.' Anything ugly he wouldn't talk about.''
By choice, he never enrolled in art courses. But he had close encounters with the art of the great modernist painters - Picasso, Dufy, Chagall, Matisse. His work incorporated their influence, yet did not mimic.
While alive, he gave away many paintings but sold none. In 1993, the first exhibit of his art was held at Norfolk's Harbor Gallery; later, the work was carried at Palmer-Rae Gallery. Since then, a Paris gallery has taken on his art.
In the past two years, 20 or more paintings have sold. Catherine Kincaid said she wants to limit sales, however, and gear toward museum exhibitions as a means to build a name for her father.
She and Nina Newby Ireland of Norfolk, a friend of the Kincaids and a partner in the marketing of Wildanger's art, are planning a traveling exhibit. Dates and venues are not yet set.
Meanwhile, the 1812 Arctic show will travel in the spring to New York, where it will be exhibited at the exclusive Union League Club, a private men's club.
The family recently gave Wildanger's portrait of the opera singer Maria Callas to the Chrysler Museum of Art in honor of the late Jean Chrysler, the opera-loving wife of the museum's chief benefactor. Museum officials said the work soon will be installed in the museum's art library.
Artists Monique Leigh Thomas and Mike Thomas, who own the 1812 Arctic, said they are thrilled about the high-profile exhibit. The paintings, including some that have never been shown, will be priced from $2,500 to $20,000.
One large work depicts a Tahitian girl taking a midnight bath in the tropics. Another, painted circa 1979, shows Elvis Presley sending a crowd of girls into a frenzy. There's Jimmy Carter's inaugural parade, and a painting of Adam and Eve with the devil. A few early landscapes, a crucifix image.
``We're trying to do something very comprehensive. We're representing the entire breadth of his art,'' Leigh Thomas said. ``We won't be showing just the pretty flowers. You'll get to see a little bit of everything.'' VISIONARY ZEAL
There's yet another event tonight in the visual arts in Virginia Beach: Artist Arleen Cohen is staging an encore performance of her multimedia presentation ``Almost in a Trance.''
In February, the Virginia Beach artist wowed a full house at the Chrysler Museum with her unique answer to the requisite artist's slide show. Cohen will present it again tonight at 7:30 at the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts.
For ``Almost in a Trance,'' Cohen wrote her own artistic biography as though it were a creation myth and read it as voice-over as she showed photographs from her life and of her art.
Primitivistic music by Gabrielle Roth helped create a trancelike mood.
The event is free and open to the public. The center is at 2200 Parks Ave. Call 425-0000 for more information. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
One of Theo Wildanger's paintings at 1812 Arctic: A Gallery of
Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach shows Elvis Presley sending a
crowd of girls into a frenzy.
by CNB