Like many northern Europeans, my dear friend Currado Malaspina looks south for climatic relief during the long, bitter winter months. "Paris is the color of a faded tourniquet and I'm tired of the cold monotony," was how he put it to me in a recent email. This April has been especially cruel prompting my peripatetic colleague to flee to El Jadida on the north coast of Morocco where Orson Wells famously filmed his iconic film, Othello.
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| El Jadida Morocco |
Like
Wells, Currado fashions himself as something of an outlaw, an
iconoclast and a dissident genius who stands aloof and alone beyond the pale of easy comprehension.
This might explain why he prefers to keep the paintings he holds most dear, closeted behind a veil of exaggerated secrecy. You see, when Currado is on vacation, (which is often) he loves to paint landscapes. Yes, Currado Giulo Malaspina, blasphemous shatterer of the sacred vessels of modernism has a hidden passion for the plein-air.
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| Almond Trees in Arles, Oil on paper, Currado Malaspina, 2009 (Collection of David Schoffman) |
So
while I wish him a productive and recuperative trip, I know
that he is anxiously struggling to somehow emerge from within the shadows of
Delacroix, Renoir, Matisse, Clore and all the other great artists who found inspiration on the North African coast.
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| Currado Malaspina, Mazagan Beach, Morocco, 2013 |
