MARIA CALLAS, oil painting by PHILIPPE VISSON, 1963

MARIA CALLAS (Oil Portrait by Philippe Visson)

PHILIPPE VISSON
American, 1942 - 2008 (New York - Paris - Washington DC - Lausanne -- some sources list him as Russian or Swiss)
oil on canvas board
36 x 18”
Signed and Dated across the top : “Visson / 1963
Notated verso : “ OFC / 129 (129) app. 25m VISSON”

Philippe Visson was born in New York of Russian emigree parents who were both international journalists. (His father's career includes political writing for the Washington Post; his mother's the Paris Gazette des Beaux-Arts)
Visson began painting when he was only 16, untrained, in a Paris Hotel. Almost immediately he was acclaimed “Boy Wonder” by art critics from France to New York. A 1958 notice in Le Figaro applauded “real maturity in the brutality of his drawing... simplification of planes...tragic intensity of the faces that he paints as if to liberate himself from an obsession”.
By 17 he was already an art star in the heady world of society and the arts...anorexic & alcoholic.

Visson's Callas was painted in 1963, when he returned from Europe to Washington DC, quit alcohol and secluded himself, painting furiously. Though Visson had doubtless known Callas in the circles they both frequented, his distinctive vision of the diva is clearly inspired by the iconic 1957 photograph by Cecil Beaton.
The same year he painted a portrait very similar in spirit, of Lee Radziwill. In later years his clients included Ringo Starr.

Provenance : a Washington, DC estate

Unframed.......................................................................................... SOLD