Margaret Modlin

MARGARET MODLIN (North Carolina, 1927 - Madrid, 1998).
"Elmer Modlin, you who contemplate creation", 1973.
Oil on canvas.
Signed with anagram, dated and titled in the lower right area.
Measurements: 194 x 129 cm; 197 x 132 cm (frame).
In Elmer Modlin, you who contemplate the creation, Margaret Modlin unfolds one of the most intense and personal symbolic universes of the art of the 20th century. The scene, hauntingly beautiful and almost visionary, places Elmer Modlin, husband, muse and prophet, as a witness to a time suspended between revelation and judgment. The composition, dominated by a large solar sphere turned into a cosmic clock, alludes to the inexorable passage of time, to human consciousness in the face of destiny and the fragility of creation.
The nude body, idealized and serene, recalls the classical tradition, but is pierced by a profoundly modern spiritual charge: the gesture of the hand holding a small orb seems to condense the weight of the world, while the gaze is lost in silent meditation. Angels, luminous doors and temporal references reinforce an apocalyptic and messianic narrative, recurrent in Modlin's work, where the end of time is not destruction, but revelation.
Margaret Modlin's life is inseparable from her painting. Trained in Fine Arts at the University of Chapel Hill (North Carolina), she met in 1947 the actor and poet Elmer Modlin during a theatrical performance. Together they built a life marked by art, critical thinking and dissidence. After their time in Hollywood and the birth of their son Nelson in 1952, the family left the United States in 1972, in part because of Elmer's critical stance toward the U.S. government after living through the horrors of World War II and Nagasaki. On the advice of writer Henry Miller, they arrived in Madrid in 1975.
In the house on Calle del Pez, Margaret voluntarily secluded herself to paint. There, far from the commercial circuits, she created a deeply coherent artistic corpus, using her husband and son as models for scenes with a strong symbolic charge, marked by spirituality, the Apocalypse and a very personal messianic message. Although she exhibited in cities such as California, New York, Italy, and Spain -her shows at the Galería de Luis in 1972 and at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in 1978, where she was the first foreign guest, Margaret Modlin did not sell a single work during her lifetime. However, she always believed it was her destiny to occupy a place in art history.
After her death in 1998, and the subsequent disappearance of Nelson (2002) and Elmer (2003), Modlin's more than 120 paintings were left abandoned in the family building, described by El País as "a house-museum full of cracks and illuminated only by the colorful paintings". The chance discovery of photographs, films and personal objects in the street allowed photographer Paco Gómez to reconstruct their story, culminating in the publication of the book Los Modlin (2013), which consolidated the myth of this unique family.