Manhattery

Manhattan theatregoers know Don Freeman for his theatre drawings in the Times and Herald Tribune. Others know his Newsstand, the one-man magazine of lithographs of metropolitan life which he gets out four times a year. Last week he swam into the ken of gallerygoers, with his first one-man show of paintings, at Manhattan's Associated Artists' Galleries.

Don Freeman is a straw-haired, exuberant young Californian who blew his way East ten years ago as trumpeter in a jazz band, trumpeted by night so that he could go to art school by day. Soon he began to freelance, has spent most of his time since prowling round Manhattan with a sketchbook. Says he with a grin: "I've got a front-row seat to this life."

Artist Freeman never stays seated long, keeps popping up to jot down more bits of Manhattery. His drawings and paintings have the same crowded vitality that Cruikshank and Leech got into their illustrations of Dickens' London, the same knack of making ragpickers a touch romantic. Some of his canvases: Sax Sec-lion, a red-coated Negro band turning on the heat in Harlem; Chatham Square Street Fight, two stevedores sparring, while kids streak up to see the fun; Such Sweet Sorrow, a pair of drunks embracing under the El.

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