Maggie's Farm

My distant relative, the surrealist/symbolist painter and printmaker, Henri Goetz, lived in Paris after moving there in 1930 from the US. He became a friend of Kandinsky. In his diary, which is online and in both French and English, Henri commented, "I admired Kandinsky greatly. A very composed man... His welcoming manner and open mind paid no heed to my youth or my anonymity as a painter. He died at the end of the War and at the time his widow, knowing of my high esteem for her husband and also of my artistic gifts, called upon me to retouch the tiny flaws which his works had developed as a result of their enforced evacuation under the occupation. I set myself up in his studio, and using his paints, his brushes and his pots, I lived out my dream of being him for a few days."
Henri was also a member of the Resistance and forced to flee Paris for a time. He invented, for and with Pablo Picasso, oil pastels which are still manufactured by the same company, Sennelier of Paris.