Discussions with Leo Marchutz about art usually covered a wide range of topics such as light, mass (gravity), volume, and most importantly unity.

When Leo Marchutz was in his early 20's, he spent eight months in Italy, between November 1924 and June 1925. Verona, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Naples… The trip ended with a stay in Capri, where Marchutz made a series of heads.

Leo Marchutz touches the heart of what painting is about. In Madame Cézanne dans la serre, Cézanne managed to beautifully achieve unity, bringing the foreground and the background on the same plane, le plan de l’art, as he calls it.

"The art of the painter consists in drawing attention only to what is essential...", Eugene Delacroix

In the following excerpt from “The Marchutz Tapes”, Leo Marchutz describes his experience of drawing in the streets of Aix-en-Provence. It is intriguing to discover how Leo Marchutz began his drawings of Aix. As a student, I have taken inspiration from Marchutz’s thoughts on drawing, of what is important, and how to make sacrifices along the way.

Leo Marchutz created, over time, drawings and lithographs of streets... as he said “the street ones are all along the way”. First in Aix and then later on in Venice he drew and made lithographs of the streets.

"...there is no work of art which is defined from outside in."

Leo Marchutz often pointed out the importance of the dialogue between works of art and artists, a stream of visual thinking that is handed down from one generation to the next going back to the first painters and sculptors.