Weather has always played a big part in the mercurial behavior of Currado Malaspina. Curiously, his mood turns darker as the sun shines brighter – summer being his worst season. As Parisian women shed raiments like serpents shedding skins, the streets become what Currado likes to call “un carnaval de décolletage.” And yet, to a man whose world is illuminated by the lamp, climate has its own peculiar consequence.
As a child, Malaspina would spend the month of August with an invalided aunt in the tiny village of Agnac in Lot-et Garonne. The Aquitaine can be a magical place for a child with its lush plum orchards and mysterious chateaux. For young Currado it was an annual agony.
Small for his age, the local children would subject him to wildly imaginative torments and unspeakable abuse. Ever since, heat and pain have been linked in Currado’s mind.
Young Malaspina took solace in sketching and many examples of his juvenilia are still extant. The Dordogne Museum of Contemporary Art recently staged an exhibition in honor of Currado’s sixty-fifth birthday and in it were several of these very early drawings.
One of Currado’s erstwhile tormentors is the eminent art critic, Raoul Contout who, in reviewing the show in Paris Match recalled their early summers, quipping, “the short child grew into the large man of elephantine ego and slight achievement.”
Children can be so cruel.
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