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ROMANTIC REALISM BY MARVIN STEEL
‘Steel’
Paintings of Life, Contrasts
By Amy Ward
Local artist one of Coconut Creek's best-kept secrets.
Coconut Creek artist Marvin Steel, 65, still remembers some of his very first drawings. "There was a war going on and I used to draw airplanes shooting down German airplanes," he said.
Since those first days of early childhood sketches, Steel's artwork has grown considerably in detail and talent. With the attention of loving parents who believed in his artistic ability, Steel trained under several experienced artists of different nationalities. Dutch, Russian and American instructors all helped Steel round out his inherent talent and develop his technique and style, a style that now is appreciated worldwide.
"If he's not the best American painter alive, maybe he's the second. I do not know any other of that kind of quality," said Rogelio Gill, one of Steel's very dedicated patrons. Gill met Steel when he was in Spain and was instantly attracted to his work.
"You can buy a painting of Marvin's maybe for $20,000, but a painting of that kind of quality would be worth half a million," he said.
What is it that makes Steel's paintings seem so spectacular to his collectors? Like a fine fabric woven out of intricate threaded detail, Steel's work exhibits the layers of color, consciousness, and creativity he's worked years to blend and perfect.
Richly hued oils drench his canvasses in the colors of life, sometimes representative of crisis or confusion, sometimes representing the warm sultry passions of the human experience.
"This is real stuff," Steel said. "This is life."
Several of Steel's paintings reveal his use of startlingly attractive nudity.
"These are the things that attract people and that's reality," he said. "In any society you have women who are beautiful. Look at the movie stars they get the best jobs; you can't ignore that. That's what I like."
Steel's use of nudity is more like a warm sip of sensuality, certainly not there for simple shock value. He said it is all part of the imaginative situations that he is trying to represent in his paintings.
"It's all a relationship between men and women and the kind of psychological ideas there," he said.
Many of his paintings relay facets of this simple relationship that has puzzled humankind for centuries, but are depicted through a kaleidoscope peek of Steel's decadent imagination. One example of his rich imagination is his piece "The Tycoon and the Hitchhikers." As three women travel on a rowboat away from their home - a destroyed city in the background, they pose gracefully and remove their clothing to attract the attention of a tycoon floating by who has taken an interest in their appearance.
"It's a romantic adventure going on," Steel said. The tycoon has a dollar sign flag displayed, which represents capitalism, Steel explained. "Capitalism saves people from poverty. These women came out to have a better life and they're actually hitchhiking to see if they can go with these millionaire," he said.
Steel's inspirations are a combination of real life and contrasts, he said, which he first pounds out in a variety of sketches, and then displays in oils with his technique of bright colors and the use of positive emotions.
"That is strange," he said of his inspirational process. "Something catches my eye and I think what would exactly be the opposite of that scene, what would never be in that scene. I get my ideas from these contrasts. I think of something opposite and it has to have a funny or strange twist to it that catches your eye."
Steel's piece "The Laughing Hat" is an example of his use of contrasts. Dark, ominous, and turbulent waters foam and crash in a roaring sea, while a little bright red hat simply bounces about the waves. The hat is not taken under by the treacherous waters, but seems to enjoy an exciting ride aboard their crests.
"I'm not pessimistic at all," he said.
Quent Cordair is the proprietor of a gallery in California that houses some of Steel's artwork.
"We like Marvin Steel because he's his own man," Cordair said. "He couldn't give a damn about potential critics and gives hardly a thought to his audience: he paints for himself - to bring into reality a vision of his own passionate, life-loving, sensuous approach to life. In so doing, he gives us the opportunity to enjoy, via his art, the pleasure of the company of a grand and refreshing spirit - worldly influenced, uniquely independent - wholly American."
As for Steel, he still remains one of the best-kept secrets in the art world, perhaps safely guarded by his passionate patrons who continue collecting his works privately without competition.
"A lifetime of painting. That's the role of the artist; when he's dead then they become something," Steel said.
For information on his available artwork call Quent Cordair Fine Art at (650) 344-1134 or visit www.cordair.com/steel.
About the Artist ~
Born in Detroit, Michigan, Steel grew up on Miami Beach, then just a small fishing town. Fishing and small boats were an early interest, still evident in his art today. When he was six-years old, his mother noted his talent in art and started art lessons for him with Miss Brooks, then at the Associated Artists art shop.
The artist studied ten years with Dutch portrait painter, Sam Jafnel, who worked for many years painting portraits at Jenny Grosingers Resort in the Catskill Mountains; at the age of 16, Steel took private lessons from Russian impressionist Leo Braschansky, and then became an apprentice and student of muralist Warren Soned. With Soned, Steel helped paint many of the art deco murals on South Beach.
His high school was a vocational art school, where he studied with Kenneth Bare, who advocated the ideas of Nickoliades. He subsequently studied at: The Ringling School Of Art, Sarasota, Florida; The Academia De Bellas Artes; El San Fernando in Madrid, Spain; and the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, where he earned a B.A. in Art.
Steel has painted in a variety of locations, including: Miami; Sarasota; Madrid; Lengries, Germany, in the U.S. Army; and presently in Coconut Creek, Florida. The person that has influenced Steel more than anyone else is writer Ayn Rand.
The artist's ethnic make up is a hodgepodge of almost every ethnicity in Europe, from the north to the south. Steel's wife's family, the Van Loven's, were cousins of the Van Gogh's. Steel's father was Barron Le Blumste-- something (changed at some point to "Bloom"). Achievements and talents include beating Blindfold World Chess Champ George Koltonowski at the age of 11 and learning to play the flamenco guitar at an early age. On the guitar, he accompanied members of his family, and he still plays gypsy flamenco for local dancers.
Steel has held jobs as commercial fisherman, boat builder, bridge tender, bronze foundryman, art teacher, mural painter and art restorer. He was married in 1966 to his beautiful model. They are still married, and she is still his beautiful model, appearing in many of his paintings. They presently reside in Coconut Creek, Florida, and have one daughter, Roxanne, and a granddaughter, Violet.
More About the Artist
Marvin Steel leaps straight out of the 1800's and paints as if the twentieth-century never happened, in terms of cultural and spiritual decline. The sense of life which infuses his paintings is devoid of the cynicism, self-doubt, pessimism and spiritual vacuousness permeating so much of what's to be found in the art world today. One of his favorite themes is the celebration of the uniquely American spirit of benevolence, joy and optimism, as juxtaposed against the world's present trend towards a focus on disaster and tragedy. His themes include the light-as-air dance of Fred Astaire, the carefree jig of Bojangles, the tuxedoed celebration of success aboard a capitalist's yacht. Steel is one of the precious few living artists who not only has something original and deeply metaphysical to say, but has the trained skill and technique to say it brilliantly, as well as the courage to say it without a trace of apology or hesitancy. He's anything but politically correct - he loves and celebrates his women, his music, modern industry and technology, hard-earned wealth and the American can-do attitude and spirit.
Steel chooses and paints his subjects with a confident, passionate and unreserved masculinity that strikes one as being more sensual, more Latin or Spanish. Like the gypsy music that he plays on his guitar for local flamenco dancers, his paintings are controlled, composed flights of bold, strong lines and brilliant colors. He leaves it all on the canvas. His choice of subject matter, often featuring nautical scenes, is influenced by his myriad travels, wide-ranging vocations and adventures....
EXHIBITIONS
During the past fifty years Marvin Steel has had numerous exhibitions. His first one man show was at the Warren Soned Gallery, Miami, in the 50's; another was at the Ringling School Of Art, Sarasota, Florida. Other one-man shows: Holly Daly Herman Palm Beach Gallery; Kottler Gallery, Manhattan; and Arthur's, Los Gatos, Calif.
AFFILIATIONS include:
Professional Artist membership in the American Society of Marine Artists; Member of the International Institute of Conservation; Professional Member of the American Institute of Conservation.
SPECIAL AWARDS include:
50th Annual
Exhibit Of Contemporary American Paintings; the Phillip Hulitar Award;
The Society Of The Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida; Strathmore Award, Carnegie
Museum, Pittsburgh; and the Fort Lauderdale Museum Of Art.
OTHER EXHIBITION VENUES include:
Mystic Seaport
Museum
Sarasota Art Center
Longboat Key Art Center
Academia De Bellas Artes, Madrid
Boone Art Center, North Carolina
San Luis Obispo Art Center, California
Town Center Gallery, Boca Raton, Florida
Salmagundi Club,N.Y.
Lowe Gallery, Coral Gables, Florida
Arnold Art Gallery, Newport R.I.