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Simple Soul. Late one night in 1931 a Russian tenor named Vladimir Doriani hunched his small, round bulk into a Russian train on the way from one small town to another. At about 2 a.m., dozing, he began to look at other passengers and they looked strange: like cutouts. Singer Doriani, who had always hated pictures felt overcome by a desire to draw.
Last spring Sidney Janis, a Manhattan connoisseur, was strolling through the annual outdoor exhibition of artists on Washington Square. Primitive most of the pictures were, but truly Primitive were those of an unknown named William Doriani. Last week, amid sophisticated hosannas on 57th Street, the works of Tenor Doriani painted in fresh color patterns with flattened childish figures, were exhibited at the Marie Harriman Gallery as pure naïve paintings in a class with those of the late Pittsburgh House Painter John Kane.