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Market Scenes - International market and daily life scenes   1965 - 2000

Early in his artistic life, Manfred had the great fortune of traveling around   the world and visiting many countries in Asia, Africa and South America where the native population dresses with very colourful clothing created by their ethnic group.
It is his fascination for colour and the human beauty of the people in some of the poorest countries in the world, which compelled him to paint this daily life scenes of men, women and kids going about their activities.
From the Waterloo Mennonite market in Ontario to the Indian market of Cuzco, Peru or a fish market in Bali, he loved the vibrant and colourful atmosphere of these meeting places , where the human interaction is the most authentic, genuine, without class distinction.

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Provence  - Landscapes and rural scenes  1979 - 2000

After three years of living in Provence at two different consecutive locations , Manfred said : “now I have seen most of the world, I want to stay here forever and become a Frenchman, there is not a better light, a more beautiful landscape and atmosphere anywhere...”
It is out of this love affair with Provence that the second part of his name was born: Heine-Baux. Les Baux-en-Provence is one of the most picturesque medieval village, clinging to a rock formation, surrounded with small olive tree groves, vineyards and sunflower fields, the air is fragrant of vapors of wild thyme, lavender and rosemary, and the “cigales” (cicadas) sing all day the beauty of Provence. Unfortunately the blue carts now abandoned in the fields, have been replaced by 2CVs or similar vehicles.
The black and white cat named Mistral was his faithful companion in Provence.
But one day the temptation came from America.... with the offer from a family friend to provide Manfred with a residence in the Catskills N.Y. while he would prepare several art exhibitions in New York City... he could not resist...
Without this trip he would have never met, in Canada ,his wife originally from France.
During our life together we went back several times to Provence, since this area is very full of memories of my youth, when visiting my grandparents in Nice.

 

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First Nations - Canadian native Indian portraits and artifacts 1987-1992

 

Manfred lived in New York State for two years and worked intensively at preparing his New York shows, but he took some time off to come and visit his brother and family in Ontario Canada. His brother introduced him to me.

Some of the first discussions we had were about art in Canada and he asked me to show him some native Indian artworks, so we went to Toronto. He had to know everything about them, because in his early youth, he had been fed with bedtime stories of American Indian kids, and he finally wanted to know the truth . So we went to the Six Nations reservation and discovered the truth step by step, we attended several of their Powwows and met many native artists. A few years later we discovered “the world of spirits" in British Columbia and drove all the way to Alert Bay at the tip of Vancouver Island to witness some of the cultural heritage of the North West Indians and also the bare reality.

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     Canada  - Canadian Landscapes and Market scenes 1986-2000

The market scenes came first and Manfred was very enthusiastic about the sight of the old Waterloo market, which at this time still had black open buggies in the background if the vendors were Mennonite people. There was a large number of them selling organic products and flowers. This is how artists record history, because things change and go from picturesque to sterile, from buggies to truck....
The Kensington Market of Toronto required more work of creativity, and then the Montreal Atwater Market appeared like a delight to his eyes. I was often a shopper in these scenes as I enjoyed talking to the vendors.
When Manfred settled in Canada, I could feel that he was nervous about his relation to the Canadian landscape, its vastness, massiveness compared to his recent experience of the exuberant countryside of Provence... but it was only a matter of time...He started by the Rockies in British Columbia and then in Alberta., he had been a skier in the Alps in his youth. Returning from the Prairies he was so vehement about his surrealistic experience of loneliness that I could not wait to see what would come out on canvas and I heard him say : “in the silence of the Prairies you feel closer to God”.
The wooden elevators are also a page of history since they are being replaced by concrete.

 

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Southwest & Florida - Southwest American natives & Florida  1989-2000

Manfred had seen the Grand Canon and Monument Valley in the 70s but we both had never seen New Mexico “the land of Enchantment”.
In 1989 we decided to take a trip to New Mexico to discover Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos, we had heard that we would see some Indian markets there. It happened that the Santa Fe market was not the type which would make a nice composition ,so we started investigating all the different tribes and pueblos in search of the talented artists working on their craft.
This took us weeks of incredible experience from deep valleys to the top of mesas, with all the numerous colour changes of the desert light. Our skin was so dehydrated that we almost looked like natives ourselves.
Ten years later in 1999 Manfred and I returned to several of the same places, including Taos Pueblo and were amazed that nothing had changed, the people working there were the same, older, shorter, more deeply wrinkled but all as nice : the keepers of the traditions. Time stands still in some villages of the New Mexico desert, away from the stress of civilization. The colours of Fall were bright yellow and orange against a bright blue sky.

 

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Prints - Including serigraphs,  stone lithographs and aquatint etchings

   
 

 

 

Charlie Rivel - Charlie Rivel performing clown

           

 

Still Life - Still life studies

           

 

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