Gluck Sandor, ARTIST, An American Original

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Contact: Howard Austin - 818-895-7464 / austin@music-world.com

INTRODUCTION

The University of Tampa was honored to exhibit 'An American Original', a retrospective exhibition of paintings by Gluck Sandor (1899-1978). I am especially grateful to Phil Lanza Sandor for the loan of the collection of over 200 works and the many hours he spent to make that exhibition a reality. Sandor was an extraordinary man both in his private life and in his artistic life. Publicly, he had received the accolades deserving of his daring and bold innovations in the theater and dance art. Privately, his gentle, compassionate but sometime tempestuous nature won him many devoted friends. His paintings reflect his belief in the uniqueness of individual's dreams and aspirations. Through his total commitment to the dance, this multi-faceted visionary started American ballet in New York City in 1931, where he also managed, directed, choreographed and performed.

Dorothy Cowden, Gallery Director, University of Tampa, Lee Scarfone Gallery

Over the thirty-odd years Sandor made paintings, a single voluptuous imagination and intelligence can be discovered and followed. The same recognizable and powerful impulses infused his work from the 1940's through the 1970's even when he explored new styles and subjects or when he contemplated and made variations on older ones. "One also finds in his work a celebratory quality, a joy and affirmation not simply of life, but of motion and movement. Sandor's paintings obviously changed as he changed. His paintings recorded his awareness of the changes in his physicality, that when he painted, he still inhabited a dancer's body and his work responded to the changing capabilities of his body. Until the end, he was always in command of his performance.

Dr. Matthew Baigell, Professor of Art History, Rutgers University

AN AMERICAN ORIGINAL

Gluck Sandor was born in Harlem, N.Y. July 4, 1899. He left home at the age of 14 to seek his independence. He attended Townsend Harris High School for gifted children in New York City, the first such program in the United States. He joined the famous Henry Street settlement where he studied drama, dance, scene design and theater arts. He performed at the Rivoli Theater, the Earl Carroll Theater, the Hippodrome and staged shows at Paramount Theater. Sandor also created the first ballets ever done on Broadway for the first "Vanities" in 1923.

Sandor continued to choreograph dance productions as well as teach and perform through the 20's in major theaters in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. "Nothing like it has ever been seen on Broadway." In 1927 alone he created 50 ballets and 100 dances for Balaban & Katz circuit theaters, such as Rhapsody in Blue, Birth of the Blues and Evolution of the Black Bottom to name a few. He was the first to do blues on Broadway.

After achieving great success in professional dance, he continued to seek new forms and in 1930 Sandor and Sorel went to Europe to study with the Charles Weidman School of Modern Dance. On their return in 1931, they opened the "Intimate Theater" over a garage at 105 west 56th St. Classes in choreography, dance theory, mime, dance gymnastics, improvisation, Russian and Italian Ballet and Modern German Dance (Weidman technique) were offered.

In September 1931 Sandor and Sorel established "the Dance center", a history-making ballet company, the first and only professional American ballet company in the U.S.A. All leading roles were played by New York recitalists. They discontinued the school so as not to compete with other schools, which may have companies and to be able to draw dancers from others, like Jose Limon who joined in 1936. The season captured top dance honors in New York City with the opening of "Petroushka" with Sandor in the lead, Lisa Parnova, ballerina from Cologne, Opera Ballet Company, Randolph Sawyer, the first black dancer to play the Blackamoor, as well as Sorel and Esther Junger. Sandor and Sorel continued to be a strong influence of dance throughout the United States in numerous productions as well as in London, England, Russia and Mexico.
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Sandor played the original Rabbi in "Fiddler on the Roof" (1964-1970) created by his protege Jerome Robbins, top Broadway director and head of the New York City Ballet Company.
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Sandor was interested in visual arts at an early age. He painted silk scarfs at the age of 17 and began painting on canvas in 1920. On a visit to the Louvre in 1930, he noted on a brochure, "If I had another life to live I would choose to be a painter and a sculptor." He designed costumes and stage sets for many years. In 1938 he disbanded his dance theater and painted "Totem and Tabu #1", "Triptych" and another painting which was lost. In 1944 he became more serious about his painting, studying life drawing, technique and color and studied graphic arts at the Art Students League in New York. He had a one-man exhibition at the Art Center in Brooklyn in 1955. He continued to design costumes and stage sets. He had numerous one-man exhibitions in Tampa, Florida, Woodstock, N.Y., and Prince Street Gallery Soho, NYC. Sandor was painting a mural in the Lanza Soho Gallery in New York City when he became ill and died in March 1978.
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Sandor expresses an empathy with the figures as they move and flow with life. His figures become individuals observing as well as involving themselves in the personal dilemma of the human condition. Textures he created by combinations of color and technique add to the richness of his works. Gluck Sandor was truly an Americal Original who, as in life, was a living expression of life, so too in his death, his paintings speak to us of life.

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