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« In the last two decades it has become almost an obsession with art-critics and art-historians – the present writer not completely excluded – to measure the quality of an artist by his attachment to realism on the one hand or his inclination towards non-objective art on the other. However, not ony should Op and Pop have taught us the irrelevance of such an attitude but even more so the age-old fact that “quality” is neither a matter of period nor style but a matter of rank. There are bad Egyptian sculptures and good abstact paintings.

Léo Marchutz being neither abstract or realistic but both and, moreover, good has, so far, found a limited if enthusiastic audience. It is, therefore, most welcome that his friends in Memphis, Tennessee, have made such an admirable effort to create a public for his work by showing his religious panels in a church, in addition to the two other exhibitions with drawings and lithographs elsewhere.

Recollecting my first encounter with Léo more than 10 years ago I am reminded of an unforgettable experience. He had succeeded in talking the Municipality of Aix-en-Provence into arranging a Cézanne Exhibition which, as it turned out, included some paintings from the New Pinakothek in Munich where I was Chief Curator at the time. Since the straircases in the Pavillon Vendôme were all much too narrow we had to unpack the crates in front of the palace in the open. It was a breathtaking moment when Cézanne’z famous La Tranchée was taken out of its case and exposed to the very same light in which it was painted in 1869. The workmen even stopped for a while in numb admiration. It was a revelation – like experiencing the Greek light for the first time….

It must have been this very special quality of light in Provence, I think, rather than a commemorative sentiment that made Léo Marchutz want to live in Cézanne’s country. As a matter of fact, it is LIGHT as a volume and space creating factor and it is LIGHT in its luminosity and spirituality that, in my view, is at the heart of Marchutz’s achievement as an artist.

Hans-Konrad Roethel The Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, N.J. March, 1969.

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