1971-06-00

The Richard Demarco Gallery
8 Melville Crescent Edinburgh EH3 7NB

June 1971

Tuesday 1

Wednesday 2

Thursday 3

Friday 4

Saturday 5
11 am Opening of Fleur Cowles Exhibition until 3rd 7.30 pm Dinner at Gallery. £ 1.25 per person, wine incl. RSVP.

Sunday 6
8 pm Proleon Concert at the Gallery. Lenoard Friedman (violin). £ 1.50 per person, supper and wine incl. RSVP.

Monday 7

Tuesday 8

Wednesday 9

Thursday 10

Friday 11

Saturday 12

Sunday 13

Monday 14

Tuesday 15
8 pm Annual General Meeting of the Friends of the Richard Demarco Gallery at the Gallery.

Wednesday 16

Thursday 17

Friday 18

Saturday 19
2 pm Friends visit to Arniston, Midlothian. Tour conducted by Miss Althea Dundas and Mr. David Baxandall.

Sunday 20

Monday 21
8 pm Talk by Fleur Cowles at the Gallery.

Tuesday 22

Wednesday 23

Thursday 24

Friday 25

Saturday 26

Sunday 27

Monday 28

Tuesday 29

Wednesday 30

This year, for the Edinburgh Festival, the Gallery is organizing an Exhibition of Contemporary Romanian Art. Richard Demarco has invited eleven artists to take part including Paul Neagu, Horia Bernea, Pavel Ilie and Ion Bitzan who have been to Edinburgh before. As was the case last year the Gallery must provide accommodation for the artists and give them a living allowance and the Gallery depends very much on its Friends to help in important matters such as this. If you can give accommodation to one of the artists during the period 14th August – 11th September, or even for part of the time that would be of enormous help. Tel. 031-225 1050.

Fleur Cowles The Richard Demarco Gallery Edinburgh 5 June – 3 July 1971

Until her marriage in November 1965 to Tom Montague Meyer of London, Fleur Cowles had been the Associate Editor of LOOK Magazine for nearly 10 years. During this period she created and edited FLAIR Magazine, which appeared in January, 1950. It was the first monthly publication to incorporate into its pages the many unusual advances in the graphic arts which had been confined before to handmade editions of books and to limited editions of costly foreign magazines. Many innovations started by her in FLAIR twenty years ago, are now regular features of contemporary magazines.
Her book, “The Case of Salvador Dali”, the first authorized biography of one of this century’s greatest eccentrics, was published in most languages of the Western world. Her previous book, “Bloody Precedent”, dealt with the dictatorship in Argentina of Juan and Evita Peron and of the amazing counterparts who ruled their country one hundred years before them. In 1953 she published the FLAIR book and, in 1965, authored “The Hidden World of the Hadhramoutt”, an account of her stay (the first American lady to do so) in this unknown desert of South Arabia.
Fleur Cowles was appointed by General Eisenhower as a Special Ambassador to represent the United States at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. She has been decorated by three Governments: in 1952, by the French as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour; in 1953, by President Vargas of Brazil as a Commander of the Southern Cross; in 1955, by King Paul of Greece with the Order of Bienfasence; (as well as being given the Queen’s medal at the time of the Coronation). She has the Honorary Degree of Bachelor of Law form Elmira College in the United States.
During World War II she served as Special Consultant to the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force. She was among the first American civilian women after VE Day to enter and inspect European countries, returning in early 1946 to become special Consultant to President Truman’s first Famine Emergency Committee, headed by ex-President Herbert Hoover.
By nature and instinct, Fleur Cowles always wanted to be a painter, but only got down to it seriously after she gave up a career in the U.S. as an editor, when she came to live in England in 1955. Her past experiences as a journalist and inveterate world-traveller are useful to her painting: the same camera-eye, the love of detail exists. Her work is entirely from memory, she is self-taught.
The invitation to exhibit in the 7th Sao Paulo Biennale in 1965 marked her first international recognition. Included in the section on Surrealism and Fantastic Art with such modern masters as Max Ernst, Dali, Picasso, Chagall, Klee, Magritte, Delvaux, Duchamps, her eight paintings introducing an unexpected gaiety – a quality which caused one critic to describe them as “the innocent among the wicked”.
Like others identified with the school of surrealism, Fleur Cowles’ work is a blending of fantasy and realism; paintings are peopled by jungle beasts, huge flowers, overgrown birds and objects of nature, in timeless space and dreamlike sequences, the paintings are never somber; nightmares are not dredged up.

Portrait by Claudio Bravo

Fleur Cowles The Richard Demarco Gallery Edinburgh 5 June – 3 July 1971

One-man shows:
London: Arthur Jeffress Gallery, 1959
Arthur Jeffress Gallery, 1963
Grosvenor Gallery, 1966
New York: Sagittarius Gallery, 1960
Hammer Galleries, 1962
Hammer Galleries, 1964
Hammer Galleries, 1967
Rex Evans Gallery, 1967
Hammer Galleries, 1969
Paris: Galerie Andre Weil, 1962
Roma: Galeria del Obelisco, 1961
Athens: Athens Gallery, 1966
Rio: Galeria Bonino, 1968
Madrid: Galeria Kreisler, 1968
Seattle: Seattle Museum of Art, 1970
(in connection with a ten-day “Fleur Cowles Festival”)

H.E. Bates, the distinguished English writer, discussing her paintings in the Weekend Telegraph, on October 4th, 1968, wrote: “For myself I see her work as a kind of floating poetry. It has the wings of innocence. It is as if, in creating a picture, she opens the door of her imagination as if there were some bird-endowed, flower-blessed, tiger-ridden Noah’s Ark and lets forth a magic flying population of creatures to enrich forests, make deserts flower and gather together in rather crazy dream sequences in which strange birds, giant blossoms, binocular-eyed butterflies and barren thorns are further ingredients in the already kaleidoscopic pattern……….”.

Group Shows:
VIII Biennale, Sao Paulo, 1965
(Surrealismo e Arte Fantastica)
Museo de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro 1966
Royal Academy, London 1959

Commissions:
Mural for Hilton Hotel, London 1962; 32 ft. x 4 ft. consisting of the national flowers of all the countries in which there are Hilton hotels.
Painting series, Hotel Hilton, Athens, 1963.

Her paintings in literature:
A book, TIGER FLOWER, written around 30 of her paintings was published in England by William Collins & Col, in October, 1968. The story, written by Robert Vavra, was inspired by her work – the result is a parable written as much for adults as for children.
Another book, “The Art of Flower Painting” by Beverly Nichols, published in 1967. Eighty colour plates illustrate the art of flower arrangement and painting through the ages – from the ancient Egyptians, Romans, Dutch primitives, Impressionists, up to the present day, which Fleur Cowles was commissioned to represent.