Dorothy’s Gallery, American Center for the Arts, is co sponsoring « Aller Retour Paris » an exhibition, May 6 to 10, and a festive evening, May 7, dedicated to the legendary American writer Henry Miller.
The Henry Miller festival is organised in collaboration with :
– The Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, California.
– Shakespeare and Company,the historic parisien english language bookstore
– Mary Duncan, Director of the Paris Writers Group and Paris Writers Press
Art Exhibit – May 6 to 10 – From 13h to 19h daily
You are invited to attend a week-long exhibition of Henry Miller’s paintings, drawings ,photographs with film, audio interviews and books.
Special Evening – MAY 7 at 7pm
Join us at Dorothy’s Gallery for a reception/celebration with talks by speakers from three countries with a film, food and wine on May 7 at 19:00.
Original paintings and lithographs
The visitor will discover Henry Miller through his original signed watercolors , lithographs, photographs of his life and loves plus recordings and books.
Henry Miller painted as passionately as he wrote. He produced more than 2,000 watercolors which have not been seen in France since 1967, but are sought after in the USA and Japan.
His controversal and erotic writing shook the puritanical America of the 1950’s, highlighting moral hypocrisy, whereas the joyfulness of his paintings reveal his optimisim and his tenderness for mankind.
The «Odyssey of Henry Miller» a 1963 film of his life in Paris, will be shown continuously throughout the show.
The French public remains passionate about the brilliance of his writings, but is not often aware that Henry Miller also painted from 1928 until two days before his death in 1980. His painting reflects the painters in the first half of the 20th century, such as Klee, Chagall, Dufy,Turner...
The devil writes but the angel paints
This great storyteller of sexuality and eroticism believed “the devil writes but the Angel paints.”
His painting reveals another facet of his personality: a world of imagination and fantasy, a joy of life and humor.
Extraordinarily generous with the art he created, Henry gave his paintings to those he loved. He also traded them for food and supplies in order to live and work.
His watercolors reveal the soul of a joyful child, who brilliantly created « portraits, seascapes,dreamscapes and escapes ». (Lawrence Durrell « The paintings of Henry Miller; Paint as you like and die happy »).
Françoise Py wrote in «The smile at the end of the ladder »: « For Miller, painting is to be born, to live the innocence of a child who discovers the world.[…] »
Join us on May 7 to celebrate Henry Miller
Discover him from the perspective of speakers from Big Sur, Sweden and Paris.
Talks by :
– Magnus Toren, President of the Henry Miller Memorial Library at Big Sur in California,
– Mary Duncan, Director of Paris Writers Group and author of «Henry Miller is Under My Bed»
Listen to the words of Henry Miller telling the little known story of how he published The Tropic of Cancer,
– Ida Therén, Swedish journalist will speak on the role of Anaïs Nin who was instrumental in the publication of « the Tropic of Cancer ».