You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
On the twentieth of October 1937 in Paris, 18 Villa Seurat of Henry Miller fame was crowded with visitors to the opening of an exhibition of the recent works of the forty-five-year-old, German émigré painter Hans Reichel. [Figure 1] It was being held in the second floor flat of the young American painter Betty Ryan. Miller and Ryan had planned this exhibition when they learned of the extent of financial hardship which had befallen their mutual friend. The guest book shows the signatures of Kandinsky, Miro, Duchamp, and Max Ernst, who adds “tres belle exposition!” The photographer Brassai was there. Others who signed in were the surrealist poet Raymond Queneau, the playwright Henri-René Lenormand, Anaïs Nin, Lawrence Durrell, and of course, Henry Miller. Lenormand would pay an extremely high price—negotiated up by Ryan—for a particular favorite oil the painter had initially been reluctant to sell; [Figure 2] but with that money, Reichel would be able to settle his long overdue account at the Hôtel des Terrasses where he had been living across the hall from Brassai, and to move to new quarters, a tiny room, on a short dead-end street in Paris's