ELECTRIC PAINTING

ONE of the largest paintings of modern times was the gigantic mural done by the late Raoul Dufy for the pavilion of electricity at the 1937 International Exposition in Paris. The finished work, depicting the history and importance of electricity from the earliest philosophers to the 20th century, was 197 feet wide and 33 feet high. Dufy christened it La Fee Electricite (The Fairy Electricity).

After the exposition closed, Dufy's mural, too big for 3 exhibition, was stored away from public view in 250 sections. The artist, who considered La Fee Electricite one of his masterpieces, worried over its neglect, and sought some way to keep his gigantic work on view. The answer was provided by a Paris publisher, who proposed that Dufy reproduce the mural as a color lithograph. Dufy set to work in 1951 and, shortly before his death in March 1953, completed the most ambitious lithography project ever undertaken: three feet high by 20 wide, done in 22 colors and printed in ten sheets (recently put on sale in the U.S. at $425 a set).

The detail from the lithograph reproduced on the opposite page shows some of the natural sources of electric power and a few of the men whose philosophical and scientific knowledge helped open up the mysteries of electrical energy to man. The other panel (overleaf) is a fanciful melange of the places (Rome, Paris, London, New York) and purposes (broadcasting music, guiding an airplane) which electricity serves. As Poet Wallace Stevens wrote in an essay accompanying the Dufy lithograph: "It is an exploitation of fact by a man of elevation. It is a surface of prose changeable with the luster of poetry and thought."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.