"'The
American woman is a great challenge for a portrait painter', Jean
Tabaud, French-born artist, said in his studio apartment at 325 South
Lake Drive. "'They are so much more reserved in expression than
the European woman, and don't project as much. The American woman
has a perfection of face structure and purity of line, which gives
a subtle look and expression, so different from the Italian woman,
for instance.'
"Tabaud
paints in many different styles including Picassoesque, but prefers
to work in portraiture, and over half of his work is now in that area.
He feels that in a period of dehumanization that we are now going
through, the human spirit that he strives to bring out in his subjects
is more necessary than ever.
"Tabaud
adapts his technique to the subject with remarkable versatility, and
his men look very masculine and his women delightfully feminine. His
paintings of children show much personality as he maintains that youngsters
develop definite character early in life.
"Originally
a first-rate ballet dancer, with starring roles in the Ballet Russe
and the Opera Buenos Aires, Tabaud injured his spine while dancing,
and his first career was finished.
"He
started painting while in a German prisoner of war camp during World
War II. After the war, he met a few established artists in Paris and
briefly took lessons from them. But, the international portraitist
maintains, painting cannot really be taught. While students can learn
the fundamentals of technique, they cannot learn sensitivity. They
either have it or they don't.
"Tabaud
is famous for painting beautiful women and discounts the cliché
of the perfect but brainless woman. 'That is ridiculous,' he maintains,
'beautiful women have as much intelligence as others and often have
more.'
"Early
in his career, Tabaud spent seven years in Morocco and during that
time painted many portraits of faces weather-beaten by time. He said
that such persons were easy to capture on canvas as everything is
there to see, and the character lines are prominent. He pointed out
that it is much harder to paint a beautiful unlined face."
