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Biography  ANTHONY TONEY NEW YORK PAINTER, EDUCATOR, ACTIVIST 1913-2004 Anthony Toney, a noted New York painter, whose career spanned 70 years, died of a lung infection on September 10, 2004 in Marin County, California at the age of 91. In 1997, Mr. Toney ended his 40 year teaching career with the New School of Social Research in New York City, and moved to Fairfax, California to be near his family. Although now hampered by severe memory loss, Toney became a fixture in the small town of Fairfax. He was embraced by the locals and could be seen roaming the streets, wearing his trade mark beret and carrying his sketchbook. He volunteered once a week at a local elementary school wowing the kids with his artistry as he painted their portraits. Until his death, Toney continued to be a creative force. Memory loss no longer allowed him to paint in the semi-abstract style that had marked his long and prolific career. But his unending drive to paint and draw each day of his life as well as the extraordinary legacy of eight decades of paintings was an inspiration to all those who came in contact with him or his work. In the spring of 2003, the College of Marin hosted a large retrospective of his work as had City College of San Francisco in 1998. In the early sixties, the artist, Herzl Emanuel published an essay, The Art of Anthony Toney, in which he already at that time noted, " For him the act of painting is no mere practice of a time-honored profession. It is an urgent, continuous life-sustaining process whereby he perpetually loses and rediscovers his own identity." At the height of his career, Toney exhibited regularly at the ACA gallery in New York, taught classes throughout the New York area, published two books on painting and drawing and completed several large murals for Syracuse University. In 1977, he wrote, " My works, those dispersed and those remaining in my studio, record my struggle for awareness and convictions in a world full of contradictions and violence." (reprinted from On Painting Realistically: A Memoir, Pergamon Press) Born in 1913 to Syrian immigrants in Gloversville, New York, young Anthony helped his father run his small grocery. At first planning to go to trade school after high school graduation, Toney, the class valedictorian, received the school's moneyed Math prize and instead enrolled at Syracuse University. Mr. Toney graduated with a BFA in 1934. Syracuse University awarded him a stipend to study in Paris. But he first returned to Gloversville in the depth of the Great Depression and painted murals under the auspices of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). He went to Paris in 1937 and studied at the L'Ecole Superieur des Beaux Arts and the L'Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. "I walked all over Paris, day and night. Even saw Picasso sitting in a Cafe at Montparnasse one day," he fondly remembered. The advance of fascism was a frightening and ominous specter for Mr. Toney and many other progressives. When General Francisco Franco helped by Mussolini and Hitler moved against the democratic government of Spain, Toney headed for Spain. He sneaked across the Pyrenees, and joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and fought with other volunteers who were willing to lay down their lives for democracy and social justice. Severely wounded in the Battle of Gandesa, Mr. Toney eventually returned to the the USA in 1939 and resumed his artistic career in New York City. He worked again for the WPA and presented his first one-man show at the Wakefield Gallery (NYC) in 1941. With America's entry into World War II, Mr. Toney shipped out to the South Pacific as a flight engineer with a troop carrier squadron of the Air Force. At the end of the war, awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and other honors, he returned to New York to once again begin his life as an artist In his second one-man show, this one at the Artist's Gallery (NYC) in 1948, the reviewer of the New York Times characterized Toney as "essentially an abstract painter, (who) utilizes a variety of painting approaches in uniting the ever widening circle of ideas emanating from his central subject matter. The subject was the ... forceful indictment of fascism and war." The reviewer concluded that ...Toney has established himself as a painter of unusual capability and real scope." In 1947, Mr. Toney married Edna Greenfield, an actress and playwright. On the GI bill, he pursued his graduate studies at Teacher's College, Columbia University and received a Doctorate in Fine Arts and Education in 1955. In 1952, Mr. Toney began his 43 year association with the New School of Social Research in Manhattan. During summers of that decade, Toney was the artistic director of Festival House in the Berkshires that attracted such luminaries as Anton Refregier and Jacob Lawrence as artists in residence and teachers. The sixties brought new changes and challenges to his life. Mr. Toney saw his role as an artist very clearly: "I find positiveness in depicting of groups of people, suggesting the capability of individuals to discuss differences, to share ideas and to work together, which may be decisive for their survival. I want my paintings to inspire a sense of optimism in the face of the seriousness of the human predicament." This was no idle chatter. Mr. Toney remained a political activist throughout his life, opposing the Vietnam War, the nuclear arms race, and repression at home and abroad. His paintings often reflected his struggles for a saner world. Anthony Toney painted two huge murals for Syracuse University. One is still on view in Bowne Hall. Entitled "Man and the Universe", it includes almost a hundred portraits of individual scientists. Mr. Toney summarized his views on the creative process in the book "Creative Painting and Drawing", that was published by Dover in 1968, and in an updated version in 1978 as "Painting and Drawing", by Prentice-Hall. In 1960, Toney had moved to Katonah, N.Y. where he established a large studio in a remodeled carriage house. He continued to have regular one-man shows at the ACA Gallery, NYC, and other venues throughout the country. His paintings won purchase awards from Illinois University, Staten Island Museum, Ranger Fund, Emily Lowe Museum, Childe Hassam Purchase Award (twice), and received such honors as Artists Equity Association (First Prize), Audubon Artists medal of honor (twice), and National Academy of Design, Benjamin Altman Figure Award. Mr. Toney's works are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Indiana Fine Arts Center, The Chrysler Museum at Norfolk, Ohio Wesleyan University, University of Illinois, New Britain Museum (Connecticut), Columbia University, Brandeis University, Rudgers University, Syracuse University and in other collections, public and private. Edna Toney died in 1993 and four years later, plagued by worsening memory loss, Toney relocated to Fairfax, California. |