ArtistHugo, Ian (Hugh Parker Guiler)

Artist Years1898-1985

Artist NationalityAmerican

TitleMother of Us All

Year1946

MediumPrint > Engraving

DimensionsPlate: 5.9 X 8.7 inches; Sheet: 8.5 X 12.2 inches: 5.8 X 4.8 inches
Sheet: 15 X 11 inches

Accession Number532090

NotesHugh Parker Guiler, also known as Ian Hugo, was Anaïs Nin's husband from 1923 until her death in 1977, and a skilled engraver and filmmaker in his own right.

Guiler was born in Boston, Massachusetts, lived in Puerto Rico as a child, and went to school in Scotland. He graduated from Columbia University, where he studied economics and literature.

He was working at National City Bank when he met Anaïs Nin. They married in March 1923. In 1924, they moved to Paris, and in that city Nin's wrote the best-known part of her famous diary. In 1939, shortly before World War II, Parker and Nin moved back to New York City. In 1940, he took up engraving and etching, studying under Stanley William Hayter of Atelier 17 in Paris, producing surreal images that often accompanied Nin's books. He also received instruction in filmmaking from Alexander Hammid, who told Guiler: "Use the camera yourself, make your own mistakes, make your own style". He used the name Ian Hugo in the 1940s when he began making experimental films, some starring Nin.

His successful banking career supported the artistic work of not only his wife but also her lover, Henry Miller, and to a lesser extent various others. His unusual tolerance and unconditional love, as well as his income, made Anaïs's work and life possible for many years. Then during the couple’s old age, this economic relationship flipped. Starting in 1966, when the first of Anaïs’s diaries was published, her late-life literary success provided crucial financial support for them both. None of Guiler’s artistic endeavors was ever financially successful.

His film Bells of Atlantis (1952) features a soundtrack of electronic music by Louis and Bebe Barron, and stars Nin as a mythical queen of Atlantis. In Jazz of Lights (1954), also featuring a score by the Barrons, the street lights of Times Square become, in Nin's words, "an ephemeral flow of sensations."

Hugo lived the last two decades of his life in New York City, dictating his memoirs and continuing his engraving and filmmaking work. He briefly met Nin's other husband, Rupert Pole, (Nin was polygamous) after Nin's death in 1977. Even though Nin and Pole's 1955 marriage was annulled in 1966, Pole was Nin's literary executor after her death; after Guiler's death, Pole scattered his ashes at the same place as Nin's, a cove on the coast at Santa Monica.
(source: wikipedia.org)

Note:
Ten Engravings were created by Ian Hugo at Atelier 17 in New York in 1943, 1945 and 1946. Until this printing, only proofs existed. The printing of this edition was done by Madeleine-Claude Joback at her New York studio between 1977 and 1978.

The portfolio was published by Associated American Artists (AAA) in New York in 1979. The total number of impressions pulled were 61: The first 20 were numbered 1/50 to 20/50 and included in a portfolio with impressions numbered 21/50 through 50/50 were available individually; there are 10 artist's proof suites numbered I/X - X/X, plus 1 "printer's proof" suite.

The Foreword was written by the artist's wife, author Anais Nin:

"Ian Hugo learned the technique of line engraving on copper at Atelier 17, under William Hayter, but as an artist he is essentially self taught. These engravings began as unconscious 'doodling'; the doodling became an unpremeditated pressure on the engraving tool. Amazing and unexpected figures appeared. The lines have the purity and simplicity of cave drawings.

The sign of the true artist is one who creates a complete universe, invents new plants, new animals, new figures to transfer to us a new vision of the universe in which dream and reality fuse. Ian Hugo's plants have eyes, the birds have the delicacy of dragonflies, their feathers have the shape of fans. Humor is apparent in every gesture. He uses a fine spider web to give a feeling of flight, speed, lightness. The body of a woman reveals the structure of a leaf, a plant. Wings are moving in a world unified by mythological themes. This is an animated world, humorous and levitating, elusive and decorative, which by its unique forms and shapes gives us the sensation of a rebirth, a liberation from the usual, the familiar, a visit to a new planet.

The ten engravings are: 1. Early Marshes, 1943; 2. Lightly, 1943; 3. Toreador, 1945; 4. Forest Woman, 1945; and the rest from 1946; 5. It Ain't Necessarily So; 6. Mother of All; 7. Together; 8. Encircled; 9. Caravan and 10. On Stage.
(source: The Annex Galleries)

Price $550.00

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