By Charles Movalli
The painter Zygmund Jankowski died last week.
Though he was well over 80, his death was still a surprise. He was something of a hypochondriac and had been telling me about his imminent demise for almost 30 years.
But given his amazing articulateness, his fluent artist's technique, and his extraordinary productivity, I'd decided that the man was a bull, destined to go on forever.
I first saw Zyg's work — no one called him "Zygmund" — at local shows. His work had a "wit" that I'd seldom seen in paintings. This, I thought, must be one very happy, outgoing individual. So I wangled a lunch date on Rocky Neck.
What a surprise I had. I found him a serious man, concerned about the direction of American art and quick to make rather rough judgments of his contemporaries. He seemed to be deeply worried that Rembrandt might not be proud of him.
Some of this deep seriousness, he explained, was a residue of his strict Catholic upbringing in South Bend, Ind. He claimed he'd even given some thought to becoming a priest. Barring that, he felt predestined to join his relatives working as laborers on the line at Studebaker.
His family had no interest in aesthetics. His mother's dying words to him were "work hard and make lots of money." But when young Zyg showed talent, an uncle took him under his wing. Years before, the uncle had won a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York — but the family refused to let him accept it. So the two surreptitiously practiced art on the weekends, telling the relatives that they were "going fishing."
The greatest break in Zyg's life came after he'd talked to his pals in the Navy about his interest in art. Home from the war and facing the assembly line, he received a telegram telling him that his mess-mate had enrolled him in the California College of Arts and Crafts. He was to start immediately. Leaving a note for his parents on the kitchen table, Zyg headed West.
At this time, California was famous for its watercolorists, and Zyg took it all in like a sponge: Rex Brandt, Dong Kingman, but especially the simple, restrained work of George Post.
Zyg could soon out-Post Post, such was his quickness at grasping the ideas behind different styles. He later used this training to found a commercial art studio back in South Bend.
The studio was only there to make money:
"I did highlights on engine screws," he said. He never took "arty" jobs. He did his "serious" art work at night. He also taught at the local university, until the powers-that-be decided department members must have PhDs. So Zyg began to teach privately.
In truth, he spent his whole life teaching, sometimes being paid for it, but most of the time, not. He gave up the business when he was in his late forties and came to Gloucester to concentrate on his art.
Zyg's personality was a mixture of Old Testament Prophet and Notre Dame Jesuit. This made him a good fly-fisherman, a terrific poker player, and an imposing instructor. Before casting a thunderbolt, he'd often try an avuncular approach.
I was frequently incinerated, however, since I kept committing the ultimate semantic crime by referring to his works as "pictures." "Pictures" came from the camera and "the camera always lies" he would say. He excoriated painters who buried themselves in photographic details — "they're just third-rate illustrators" or "picture makers," he would say, He had respect for Andrew Wyeth, but none for his imitators.
For Zyg, everything existed in relation to everything else, and these relationships were distorted by the flat, exaggerated focus of the camera. When you paint, he'd say, think about relationships.
Taking students to the town wharves, he'd point to the seagulls. "What color are they? Watch them go from the sky to the trees to the buildings, and the sea." Against each background, they changed color — most noticeably from black against the sky to white against distant trees.
For fun, he'd suggest that students follow the edge around a portrait by John Sargent: never a wire line, it subtly shifts from hard to soft, as it relates to the background.
Once when I was having trouble judging the color of a model's eye-socket, I was told to "look at her thumb." A mystic suggestion! But the thumb caught a reflection from the pants and was bright red: using that color as a gauge, I looked back at the socket and saw a beautiful green.
As might be expected, Zyg had a contempt for rules and regulations. Look and feel, he'd say. Compositional rules came "after the fact." That is: the artist creates, and literary men codify the results.
Because of his iconoclasm, Zyg could be a particularly bracing or scary influence on students, most of whom cling tightly to any rule that might help them through the complexities of art. Rather than help, Zyg felt that "The Rules" hamstrung students, and made them afraid to trust their own instincts.
Much like our poet Vincent Ferrini, Zyg had come to the conclusion that, after all his years of study and practice, his instincts and experience could be trusted. He was willing to let an educated impulse guide his hand.
Since he also felt that there were limitless possibilities in every subject, he would spend a day working over a motif, doing 10 or even 20 interpretations, each emphasizing a different element: rhythm, weight, space, shape, color. When you asked him what he'd been doing lately, he might hand you a stack of watercolors, two feet tall!
It seems like yesterday — but it was probably 20 years ago when we had lunch at Rocky Neck. I had the temerity to ask him how one could become a decent painter.
Zyg quickly grabbed a pencil and wrote the "solution" on a piece of a ripped placemat.
It's framed now and hangs next to my easel.
In a lower corner, he wrote "HONESTY." Then, in bigger letters, he wrote: "Make a Few Mistakes!"
Charles Movalli is an acclaimed painter, a Gloucester resident and a member of the Rockport Art Association.
