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Some images are in two
categories. The colours of Manfred Heine-Baux
paintings may vary depending on the setting of your monitor.
Larger images are best viewed at a distance from your screen.
Click on an Image to Enter a Gallery
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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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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the fields, have been replaced by 2CVs or similar vehicles.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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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
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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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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
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Charlie Rivel -
Charlie Rivel performing clown
Still Life -
Still life studies
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