Synopsis
In the early years of the twentieth century, a retired legal clerk in Montmartre named Leon Angely collected Picassos, Modiglianis, and Utrillos before any of these artists were well known. And he purchased many of these creations after his failing vision left him almost completely blind. Legend has it that Leon was assisted by a young girl who served as his "eyes," and based on her description of the work he would make his selections. This homage to the 'blind man who was crazy for color' uncovers previously unknown information about this important yet largely forgotten figure who inspired one of Picasso's most powerful engravings, featuring a 'Blind Minotaur' being led by a little girl. The book is illustrated with original artwork by Picasso's model and muse, Sylvette David, who posed for the painter when she was only nineteen years old, in 1954. Now eighty-seven, Sylvette credits Picasso with inspiring her to devote her life to painting. Her work is frequently exhibited in Europe, and in 2021 she was invited to lecture at the Musee Picasso is Paris.
About the Authors
ROB COUTEAU is a Brooklyn-born author and visual artist whose work has been cited in the New York Times and whose books have been praised in Evergreen Review, Publishers Weekly, New Art Examiner, Midwest Book Review, and Witty Partition. In 1985 he won the North American Essay Award, sponsored by the American Humanist Association. His work has been cited in books such as Ghetto Images in Twentieth-Century American Literature by Tyrone Simpson, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'Love in the Time of Cholera' by Thomas Fahy, Conversations with Ray Bradbury edited by Steven Aggelis, and David Cohen's Forgotten Millions, a book about the homeless. His interviews include conversations with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Justin Kaplan, Last Exit to Brooklyn novelist Hubert Selby, Simon & Schuster editor Michael Korda, LSD discoverer Albert Hofmann, Picasso's model and muse Sylvette David, sci-fi author Ray Bradbury, film star and bibliophile Neil Pearson, and historian Philip Willan, author Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy. Couteau has appeared as a guest on Bob Barrett's The Best of Our Knowledge (WAMC), Len Osanic's Black Op Radio, and on Monocle 24 in Europe. Since 2020 he has devoted himself to republishing annotated texts of important but forgotten authors such as Stanley Marks, Charles Beadle, and Francis Carco. In 2023 he published Intimate Souvenirs, a memoir featuring an Introduction by Robert Roper, author of Nabokov in America: On the Road to Lolita and Now the Drum of War: Walt Whitman and His Brothers in the Civil War.
In 1954 in Vallauris, France, a beautiful young woman named SYLVETTE DAVID befriended the century's greatest artist. She soon became the subject of over a hundred of Picasso's drawings, paintings, and sculptures (one towering thirty-six-feet high). After this life-changing encounter, Sylvette devoted her life to painting. In 2017 she published I Was Sylvette, a memoir co-authored with her daughter, the sculptor Isabel Coulton. Sylvette's latest series of watercolors, commissioned for this book, portray a blind art collector, Leon Angely, and his precocious guide, Josephine, who unwittingly inspired Picasso's greatest engraving.
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