In Venice itself, a group of young U.S. painters made a deep bow to the Venetian past. They were the members of a small U.S. art colony that has settled since war's end in the city with the candid intention of learning all they can from the work of the old Venetian masters. Last week ten of them hung up 35 of their pictures in a 15th century palazzo and invited the town in to see the results.
The subjects were strictly 20th century but a long way from conventional modernism. Painter Paul Resika, 24, who once was an abstractionist, showed two straining dockworkers grappling with heavy sacks against a classic background; Pegeen Helion, 27, produced a pattern of bright, doll-like figures in gondolas, and German-born Ernest Mondorf, 27, a large, symbolic study of intertwined nudes.
Most interesting of the lot was a 38-year-old ex-abstractionist named Edward Melcarth, who paints mural-size canvases of factories and workmen, using one of the Renaissance's favorite materials, egg tempera. Painter Melcarth has his eye on what he hopes is a potential new market for art: U.S. labor unions. He plans to ship off canvases to various union headquarters around the country and invite the members to pay him whatever they think his paintings are worth. In San Francisco, the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union now has before it a 22-by-9-ft. Melcarth commemorating their 1934 strike. In December, the union has promised to pass the hat.