Man

"Sometime acrobat, magician, horse thief, highwayman, circus-man, poet, sculptor, fomenter of disturbances in the Far East and superb Baron Munchausen." So reads a placard in the New Art Gallery, Madison Avenue, Manhattan, where Merton Clivette, 79, is having his first one-man show of paintings, his first artistic renown at all, but enough of it now to make one of the most amazing stories in the annals of art. Within three days from the opening of his exhibit, 30 paintings had last week been sold, at prices ranging from $200 to $2,000, and famed sculptors Jo Davidson and Paul Manship were among the buyers.

Artist Clivette has lived of late in Greenwich Village, running a curiosity shop called Soul Light Shrine. "Another of those crazy Village clubs," said passersby. But in one of these clubs of late, George Kellman, owner of the New Art Gallery, saw suddenly before his face a canvas showing four horsemen outriding a blizzard. It had color, light, demoniac motion. It was by World-Citizen Clivette. Mr Kellman bought it and others--cascades that thundered, tigers that snarled. Then he opened his up town show.

Active Painter Clivette is in attendance at the show, slender wiry, electrical, his hands like names. To illustrate motion, he will balance an umbrella on his goateed chin before a canvas. "After 40 years of tossing knives into the air you learn light and motion," says he.

He will tell you he was born on the Indian Ocean. At 6, enamored of red circus wagons, he followed them from home; was soon a tight rope walker ("thus,: set, prance, pretend to pitch, up again-- ah, the split!") An enemy cut his tight rope; he fell; killed two people. Worse, it tore his painting forearm open. ("You see the scar? Like a shark bite!"). He roars anecdotes about his old pal,Jesse James; tells that his back shows 200 knife and bullet wounds, and that there are two dozen bullets in him now.