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| The Kaitz
Original Collection The Kaitz Estate Collection of original paintings still adorns the walls of the studio and home, in Monticello, New York, the artist lived and painted for the last 20 years of his life, and where his widow, Mildred Kaitz, is overseer of the estate. The original Kaitz collection includes over 150 paintings, and sketches, spanning nearly seven decades of creativity, from the late 1920's through 1992, when Gustave Kaitz, completed his final work. The Kaitz collection is an enlightening era of Art Deco in its supreme form. As a young artist Gustave Kaitz developed a six fold media of pastels, pencils, and water colors on board, which he perfected through the years. The unrestricted color and movement of Kaitz's work permeates the subtle intensity by which his art flows, taking on untried vision through his conceptual Art Deco collection of the 20th Century. At the age of 17, Gustave Kaitz created Sacrifice (1930) woman of universal bondage, acclaimed as one of his great ritual achievements. Terra, painted in 1982, is earth woman. Her divinity encompasses all existence. In her hands she holds the spiritual realm of eternity. A wonderful writer of essays, and short stories, Kaitz revealed an unusual flair for illusion, unmasked in his art, as well as his philosophical thought. Many of Kaitz pieces were created as an offering to a particular ethnic community. American Opus (1985) was an expression of acknowledgement and promise for Native Americans, which he accompanied with a moving essay of their struggle and despair. Buddha and the Eight Fold Path, and Jesus the Jew (mid '70's) were inspired by the artist's impassioned spirituality. Voyager (1975) a depiction of the New York skyscrapers, ascends to the heights of the heavens, where one's inner world of illusion can be envisioned as reality. Hope, Phoenix, Ebbsoul, and Voyager are paintings that seem to zoom, swirl and materialize out of space and time, reflecting, in the Kaitz's words, "the mysticism of existence combined with the constructional mind of man." His circle of admirers and collectors is as vast as his work, having painted commissioned pieces as far off as Hong Kong. (See on-line Gallery to view selected works). The art of Gustave Kaitz bursts confidently into the future with the intensity and spirit of the millennium to come. I would walk the streets of Manhattan and look up into the heavens and feel the wonderment of new worlds to be. Gustave Kaitz |