Cizek's Children

Herta Breit, aged 11, paints tender little watercolors. Anneliese Freisler, 10, draws a Mrs. Profiteer with a biting touch of social satire. Ed Viet, 12, and Grete Hanus, 13, model little wax figures with a profound sense of rhythm. Franz Probst, 13, has an exciting vision of the Russian Revolution. Grete Blatny, 13, paints a Tyrolese wedding party. These young people are students in the art school of Dr. Frank Cizek in Vienna.

War, famine and pestilence brought proud Austria low. But even at the nadir of her depression there were not lacking signs of a spiritual renaissance. In the whole cultural life of Vienna today, once the embodiment of Straussian color and gaiety, there is no more hopeful item than the school of Dr. Cizek, an exhibition which (now on view in Manhattan) will later tour the U. S. It has already been shown in England.

In Vienna, happy faces are rare. But at Dr. Cizek's school, a great, bare studio room near the Graben, 60 shabby boys and girls from rich and poor families alike are intently interested in what they are doing and obviously happy. The children choose their own subjects and media. They play, eat, bring their pets when they want to. Cizek's genius is in knowing how to keep his hands off. He encourages, suggests, advises rarely, but always the children draw and paint only what they feel. "If it were possible," says he, "I would have my school on a desert island in mid-Atlantic." He is trying to divest them of mere imitativeness, of the veneer and decadence of a routine civilization. As a result the children produce works of unspoiled vigor, naive insight and not a little humor. They are singularly untroubled by the isms and vagaries of modernist Art. There are fancy and fantasy, of course, but all with a highly personalized expression.

Dr. Cizek says four is not too young to start active work. Then they are unspoiled by comic strips and jazz. For 20 years he has been turning out successful artists, but only as a by-product of a school where creative expression is the real goal.

The Academy

America's premier salon of native art, the winter exhibition of the National Academy of Design, threw open its doors. More than 1,900 persons thronged the galleries of the American Fine Arts Society on 57th

St., Manhattan. Eight hundred and fifty-two paintings were hung, out of 2,500 submitted--a record collection, taxing the limited wall space.

Louis Betts, N. A., long a most facile portraitist, achieved the most coveted honor of the show, the Altman Prize of $1,000, with his Elizabeth Betts of Wortham, by whom hangs a tale. This lady was an ancestress of the artist, embalmed in the family archives as a "sad spinster of 21." She quarreled with her lover, who straightway went off to the wars. To regain his love, she made herself a most marvelous frock and went to call on his sister. Whether the strategem succeeded we are not told, but Mr. Betts, aided only by an old print, has done a most appealing portrait of the graceful maiden lady in her gown of heavy yellow silk, poke bonnet, black mitts, lace shawl.