Leo & I and the Ghost of Cézanne

Weyman’s pleasant debut memoir celebrates the legacy of his artistic mentor, German painter and lithographer Leo Marchutz (1903–1976).

In 1972, Weyman and other acolytes of Marchutz helped open the Marchutz School of art education in Aix-en-Provence, France. In this book, the author offers a tribute to his former teacher. Marchutz received formal education only through age 13; an autodidact thereafter, he took inspiration from nature and museum artworks. Despite the artist’s Jewish background, half of his artistic subjects drew on New Testament imagery, and late in life, he confessed to being “Catholic at heart,” claiming that “without religion there is no art.” The book includes reproductions of Marchutz’s pencil sketches—ephemeral strokes depicting the Annunciation or Aix’s main street—as well as watercolor homages to the French artist Paul Cézanne. Marchutz, the author writes, prized above all the “integrity of the whole”: balancing nature and art, tradition and modernity, individuality and universalism. In 1930, he settled in France, in a house that had often been a subject of Cézanne’s paintings; he hid from the Nazis in its henhouse. He later used his expertise to help the police recover some stolen Cézannes. When Atlanta native Weyman arrived in Aix in 1961 for his junior year of college abroad, Marchutz became his teacher and surrogate father, imparting his love for Cézanne and his doctrines of artistic integrity in weekly feedback sessions. Living in rural France required some adjustment, Weyman writes, but he enjoyed exploring local scenery and engaging in art tourism in Paris and Italy. He eventually became Marchutz’s assistant and one evening saw a “phantasmagoric image” of Cézanne at Marchutz’s house, which he took as confirmation of his artistic vocation. Long after Cézanne’s and Marchutz’s deaths, their spirits remained influential; indeed, Weyman at times describes Marchutz as almost a Jesus-like guru, once referring to a student as a “convert to Leo.” Marchutz, he writes, taught that true originality flowed when the artist, Zen-like, put aside the self while searching for light. This book makes clear that that light and transcendence infused his paintings and his life and could not fail to influence his students. His was an ignoble, unceremonious end (reflected in this book’s abrupt ending), but Weyman offers a belated, engaging eulogy.

A touching, atmospheric painter’s tribute.