Date: Fri 15-Jan-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: JAN

Quick Words:

obit-Stella-Bloch-Eliscu

Full Text:

OBITS: Stella Blooch Eliscu, Longtime Resident & Celebrated Artist w/ cut

BY JAN HOWARD

Stella Bloch Eliscu, 101, a longtime resident of Newtown whose artistic career

spanned over 80 years, died January 10 of pneumonia in the Bethel Health Care

Center.

The artist's drawings and paintings have always been celebrated for the way

they conveyed the movement of dancers, the mood of late night jazz clubs and

life on Harlem streets. Mrs Eliscu worked in pencil, chalk, pastel, and oil on

canvas and collage.

Born on December 14, 1897, in Poland and raised in Manhattan, she was married

in 1930 in Hoboken, N.J., to the late Edward Eliscu, an award-winning song

lyricist and writer. Mr Eliscu died last June.

She is survived by two sons, David of Newtown and Peter of Manhattan, and six

grandchildren: Michael, James Edward, Jenny, Michael Bloch, Charlotte and

Nicholas.

Before moving to Newtown in 1964, Mrs Eliscu and her husband lived in

Hollywood, Calif., and New York City where he worked as a screenwriter,

playwright and lyricist.

David Eliscu said his mother's legacy is the unique quality of her vision and

her commitment to show that vision to others.

"She felt she was a historian, a documentarian, recording what she saw to pass

on to others. She was recording a time in history," he said.

"She had an appreciation of African-American culture and the depth, richness

and seriousness of it that she got from visiting the Orient and seeing their

culture," he continued. "She had a wonderful spirit and was an inspiration to

others. She was a pioneer."

Stella Bloch was married briefly during the 1920s to Ananda K. Coomaraswamy,

the first curator of the Far East collection at the Boston Museum of Fine

Arts. With him, she traveled to the Orient, where she studied dance. She was

later among the first dancers to introduce authentic Far Eastern dance to New

York and Boston audiences.

"Almost no one accomplished what my mother-in-law accomplished. She traveled

in the Orient before women had the vote. She was painting up to when she had a

stroke," Cordalie Eliscu said.

According to Mr Eliscu, his mother had a lifelong love and appreciation of the

dancer Isadora Duncan, who she first saw perform in 1914. Mrs Eliscu was the

first American pupil of the Isadorables, the six original students of the

dancer.

She brought her understanding of dance and dance movements to her art.

"How beautifully she captured the mood of Duncan's dancing and carried that

tradition on in her art," Mr Eliscu said. "It was like watching a dance."

A self-taught artist, Mrs Eliscu's career began in 1918. Since 1983 she had

been represented by Beaux Arts Gallery in Woodbury, which presented a

retrospective show of her works in 1996.

"Her career was very long. She had 80 years of exhibiting her work. That's

incredible," said Michael Coleman, the director of Beaux Arts.

"She came into art through her dance. Both American art and dance were

beginning to find their place at that time. She developed in that culture. Her

work is very American, very straightforward."

Mr Coleman described Mrs Eliscu's work as poignant and characteristic of human

life. "What she had inside to say comes out in her work," he said.

Her work will increase in importance, he said. "She is gaining more

recognition. Her work is beginning to arrive in larger collections."

Mrs Eliscu's artwork is in countless private collections dating from the

1920s. Major examples of her works are in The New York Public Library for the

Performing Arts, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, The Harvard Theatre

Collection, Harvard University, and the Schomberg Center for Research in Black

Culture in New York.

Mrs Eliscu's paintings have been in many exhibitions and shows over the years,

including "The Theatre in Arts" at Sidney Ross Gallery in New York in 1932;

the first International Jazz Festival in Washington, D.C. in 1962; and "The

Art of Jazz" in 1982 at the Schomburg Center.

In the 1950s, Dance magazine published her drawings of dancers in

choreographer George Balanchine's ballets.

Among notables captured through her art were the dancer Josephine Baker, the

blues singer Bessie Smith, the jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk and

the jazz pianist Oscar Peterson.

According to Cordalie Eliscu, Mrs Eliscu was a breast cancer survivor in the

1950s and during her early years in Newtown was very active in the anti-war

movement.

Owners of her work have included Katharine Hepburn, Dorothy Gish and George

Cukor.

A memorial service will be January 17 at 4 pm at the home of David and

Cordalie Eliscu, 23 Sanford Road in Newtown.

Donations in her memory may be made to the C.H. Booth Library.