Jay
Stowitts made his entry into the world on June 26, 1892,
born in his parents' humble apartment above a hardware store in Rushville,
Nebraska. The family
then settled in the Black Hills of South Dakota, a geographical region sacred
to the Sioux Nation. His father found work as a clerk for a gold mining company
in Lead where Stowitts attended public school. He studied the classical curriculum
of the era - Virgil, ancient history, mathematics, German and English literature.
His education as an artist took place outside the classroom, in the Lakota
encampments beyond Lead, where Jay's true friends lived. These Native American
people allowed the blue-eyed, blond youth into their world where he experienced
the pace of "Indian Time", and learned the power that dwells in
nature and mythology.
Following his graduation from high school the Stowitts family
completed their western trek and settled in Los Angeles. The
Golden State provided a richness and diversity of life which
became both point of departure and a point of return for his
fantastic career in the arts. With meager savings and promise
of scholarships, Stowitts entered the University of California
at Berkeley in August, 1911.
Across the Bay, "The Jewel City" was rising phoenix-like from the devastation
of earthquake and fire. It was in San Francisco when Stowitts became captivated
by his first glimpse of ballet at a performance of Danish ballerina Adeline Genée
and her partner, Alexandre Volinine, with whom, ironically, he would one day
compete for accolades. Stowitts began private ballet class immediately thereafter
and learned the basic rudiments of classical technique. Like Isadora Duncan,
Ruth St. Denis and America's other great dance pioneers, he worked with what
was close at hand. By his senior year Stowitts was an accomplished dancer,
performing in theaters and private homes of ambitious society hostesses.
Anna Pavlova discovered Stowitts dancing at the Greek Theater
in Berkeley in the summer of 1915 and invited him to join her
ballet company. He canceled graduate
studies at Harvard and embarked on an adventure of excitement and romance that
took him to the major stages of the Americas and Europe where stardom awaited.
He left Pavlova's company to settle in Paris and pursue a solo career. Now
a star in his own right he appeared in London, Stockholm, Madrid
and New York.
In Paris Stowitts starred in the 1924 Folies-Bergère with dazzling costumes by
Erté.
Few dancers have the courage to retire in their prime, especially
when "trained
down to racehorse shape," as Stowitts described himself. Even fewer have
the courage at age 33 to launch themselves in an entirely new medium. By 1925,
he was creating a career for himself as a painter from his studio on Montmartre's
Avenue de Clichy. From his experiments with palette and brush ambitious collections
of paintings soon followed: The Golden Age of Dance; The Fall of the Angels;
and The Work of Stowitts for Fay Yen Fah, costumes and stage designs for a
Chinese opera.
In 1926 Stowitts made his first film, "The Magician", for Metro Studios.
With earnings from this venture he was able to underwrite an odyssey to the East
where he lived and painted in Indonesia and India. He returned to Paris in 1931
and accompanied his Asian collections on a tour of major museums in Europe and
the United States. In Hollywood he was The Sun God in Garbo's "The Painted
Veil" for MGM in 1934.
Next he completed 55 paintings of nude athletes entitled American
Champions which he accompanied to Berlin for exhibition during
the 1936 Olympic Games. The paintings caused a sensation, attracting
crowds and critical acclaim in the German press. The depiction
of Black and Jewish athletes, however, offended Nazi sensibilities
and the notorious Alfred Rosenburg closed the exhibit. Using
his last funds to ship the paintings safely back to America,
Stowitts became stranded in Berlin where he remained for more
than a year before returning to California at the end of 1937.
The German interlude marked the end of his career in the public
spotlight as war wreaked havoc on cultures he knew and loved.
Stowitts grew a beard befitting a sage. And so he was. His
scholarly background in mathematics and symbolism inspired
Stowitts to
use the language of sacred geometry to illuminate in paint
invisible energies of higher consciousness. Stowitts then began
painting
The Labors of Hercules and chose Steve Reeves as his model.
Sadly, the artist became too ill to compete the work. (Ironically,
Reeves
would go on to fame and fortune in Italy in film roles, including
Hercules, and other mythological heroes.)
Stowitts died peacefully in February, 1953. His body was cremated
and the ashes spread to the four winds as he wished. The paintings
he had created over a lifetime
were hidden away, deep in museum storage and private collections, where their
brilliant colors and records of vanishing cultures offered silent rebuke to
the materialism they were meant to protest. Recounting the
accomplishments of Stowitts
is not the entire record of his remarkable story, even though art occupied
the greater part of his life. Shortly before his death, in
a letter to an old friend,
Stowitts wrote what surely must be one of the great understatements in the
history of 20th century art:
I have done my best to contribute something lasting to civilization.
.
--Anne Holliday
