So comments gay Canadian artist Peter Flinsch when contacted about the forty-year
retrospective of his work sponsored by the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation (LLGAF) in New
York City's Soho district September 13-October 15. Titled "Montreal's Peter Flinsch:
Paintings and Drawings, 1954-1994." the show amply demonstrates his passion for the
body in its oil portraits, its exquisite drawings of male nudes, and even its lushly
colored landscapes. Adds Flinsch: "One of my favorite artists is the English Romantic
William Blake, who said that in every landscape he found a part of the human being. I
subscribe to that view exactly."
Flinsch's work also demonstrates his love of movement: His subjects walk, run, swim,
dance, flex their muscles, crouch, make love. "I've worked a lot with athletes and
dancers." he says. "I've sat in gyms, watched boxing matches, watched ballet and
dance rehearsals, trying to capture the movement and the mood."
A
good deal of the power in his work comes from his mastery of the line. Comments LLGAF
cofounder Charles Leslie: "Peter has an amazing, an almost miraculous ability to lay
down a line in wet ink and have it perfect the first time - no question of erasures or
changes. It's a skill that transcends technique; it's pure, raw talent, and helps make his
work surpassingly impressive." Nevertheless, a great deal of practice has gone into
developing that skill. "Drawing is a very large part of my art," says Flinsch.
"So is the line. I draw every day, and I've worked at perfecting the line."
At
age 74, Flinsch has spent a great number of days drawing lines. And to meet him in person
is to encounter a physical presence that remains commanding despite his years: tall,
"larger than life," in the words of Charles Leslie, his great size accompanied
by an expressive voice and gestures.
It
is also a voice that speaks with a German accent, for although Flinsch is now a Canadian
citizen, he was born in 1920 into a well-to-do upper-bourgeois family whose home was
Leipzig, Germany. Educated at liberal, private boarding schools, he served during World
War II in the German air force. It was not a happy experience. In 1942 he was accused of
homosexual behavior by a sergeant who disliked him. "I hadn't done what I was accused
of," Flinsch says, "but I knew I was gay and admitted I had gay feelings during
my court-martial. It was quite enough for the military court to find me guilty."
Being in the air force, Flinsch was not placed in a concentration camp but instead
assigned to a military punishment unit that carried out duties such as minesweeping. The
work was dangerous, the odds of survival not good. "What saved me." he notes
ironically, "was malaria. I got it in North Africa, maybe Italy, the kind that
doesn't necessarily kill you right off but comes back regularly, every three months."
So every three months he had to be hospitalized, which kept him off the battlefield for
weeks at a time.
War's end found him back in Leipzig, recuperating from a wound he sustained in February
1945. "Germany was in shambles," says Flinsch. "I had no money, my family
had no money. I was well enough to work, and needed a job. " He found one as a scene
painter and carpenter in the local civic theater, reopened shortly after the war to serve
as a means of cultural reeducation for the German people after twelve years under Nazi
rule.
"Leipzig was in the Russian zone of occupation," Flinsch explains. "So as
you may guess, I soon ended up doing 'people's art'. I got a good technical art education,
but I still have nightmares about painting another 30 foot-high mural of Karl Marx."
Deciding people's art was not for him, he moved to the Western sector of Berlin, where he
met Heino Heiden, a dancer and choreographer, who was to be his lover for ten years. In
1952 the two men moved to Paris, and in 1953 to Vancouver, where they had German-Jewish
friends who had already immigrated. Liking Canada immensely, he became a citizen, and
moved to Montreal in 1955. From then until his retirement in 1985 he served as an art
director with the television services section of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
(CBC).
His work for CBC not only gave him great professional satisfaction, but economic security,
allowing him the freedom to develop his own art as he wished: "I never had to ask if
I dared expose my art or if it would sell. I could experiment and do anything I liked -
which of course is beneficial for any artist." He adds: "Over the course of
forty years an artist changes and develops. It's always my hand, but themes change. I've
also traveled a lot. There are pieces inspired by things I've seen in Morocco, Zimbabwe,
the West Indies."
Flinsch is represented in public and private collections in Canada, the United States,
Britain, Germany, Italy, and France. Besides LLGAF he has had solo shows at galleries in
Montreal, Toronto, and Oshawa in Canada; Amsterdam; and Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg,
Lübeck, and Hagen in Germany. Galeries Janssen in Berlin is planning a show in honor of
his seventy-fifth birthday next year, to be accompanied by a monograph on his drawings.
Asked for a concluding remark, Flinsch states: "You can say I'm optimistic. If you
ask me about my experiences being gay I'm a very great optimist. If anyone had told me in
1943, when I was down and out, that fifty years later I would see what I see today, and be
able to talk about it like I'm talking to you, I would have ... I mean, you know, it's a
miracle. I never would have believed it. Even with the antigay backlash that happens
sometimes now, I'm an optimist - very positive." |
