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A public display for a reclusive artist
By LENNIE BENNETT ST. PETERSBURG -- Enrique Chavarria. Don't strain your brain; you've probably never heard of him. But this reclusive Mexican surrealist who died in 1998 has found a champion in Florida's first lady, Columba Bush. Her interest, and a new willingness by the collector who owns Chavarria's entire body of work to show it to the public, may unseal the door to the artist's hermetic life and career. Twenty of Chavarria's paintings are on view at the Florida International Museum in a new exhibition, which was officially opened on Thursday by Gov. Jeb Bush and Columba Bush. It was Columba who selected the Chavarria show to be the cultural component of the Gulf of Mexico States Accord 2002 annual conference which met in St. Petersburg this week. One work, Woman's Head with Wagon Train Necklace, will stay at the museum, a gift of Dr. David Prensky. Prensky owns the collection, which he gathered with his late wife Bryna. It was shown for the first time in January at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee, where the governor and first lady, a native of Mexico, saw the art, met the Prenskys and went from there. The story of Enrique Chavarria and the almost 40-year friendship he shared with the Prenskys bears similarities to the lives of two famous artists: Vincent Van Gogh, who died in similar obscurity; and Salvador Dali, who also had two generous patrons, Reynolds and Eleanor Morse, to help solidify his legacy with their comprehensive collection of his works, now housed in a museum in St. Petersburg. While Chavarria's art is not of the stature of Van Gogh or Dali, it is good, and a worthy example of Mexico's increasingly popular art. David and Bryna Prensky went to Mexico for the first time on a second honeymoon in 1954 and didn't leave for almost 30 years. At the time, Prensky said, Mexico was "the Paris of the Western Hemisphere." He started a dental practice in Mexico City and she, an artist, attended classes at the Academy of San Carlos, where the great muralist Diego Rivera had studied. Bryna Prensky took an interest in the younger generation of Mexican artists and opened a gallery on the main paseo in Mexico City in 1959. She was her own best client, buying hundreds of works by sculptors and painters, including Chavarria, an intensely shy man who first came to the gallery with one of the three maiden aunts with whom he lived. "She was astonished by his work," Prensky said. Chavarria was part of a movement called neosurrealism, younger artists who admired the original movement but were not directly affiliated with it. His work used a language of symbols that was far less personal and analytical than classic surrealism. "My wife loved the fantasy of his work," Prensky said. "She bought all his paintings, up until he died in 1998 at 71." Chavarria rarely ventured beyond his house. He had a speech impediment that made him uncomfortable with people, Prensky said. Formally trained as an artist, he also educated himself in the classics and world literature. "He could read in four languages," Prensky said, and the images in his paintings are a complex stew of allusions to his wide-ranging cultural interests, with the same dreamlike quality of the Central and South American literary genre, magical realism. The Prenskys returned to the United States in 1982 because, Prensky said, "Mexico had changed." They closed his practice, sold their property and left with hundreds of paintings by Chavarria and other Mexican artists before the government could nationalize them. They settled in Palm Beach and she had a small gallery, but their collection mostly stayed in their three apartments, one of which was her studio. Last year, she decided to exhibit his work at the Brogan Museum and selected 50 paintings from their collection of about 200. Bryna Prensky died several months ago and her husband said he is now devoting his time "to finishing up her projects." And to finding a home for their collection of Mexican art. "I don't want to break it up," Prensky said. He'd like to find a museum that will agree not to sell any of it, much like the Morses' quest in the 1970s and 1980s to find a suitable venue for their collection of Dalis. He has no plans to send it back in Mexico. "They have plenty of art already," he said. If you goEnrique Chavarria: Journey into the Subconscious" is at the Florida International Museum, 100 Second St. N, St. Petersburg, through Feb. 9. (727) 822-3693.
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