FOTO PRESENTI 3
	Bruce Patrick Henry BRUCE PATRICK HENRY BODEGON Bruce Patrick Henry BRUCE PATRICK HENRY NATURA MORTA Nature Morte, 1921-22 Oil and Pencil on Canvas 35 X 45 3/4 inches Collection: Whitney Museum, NYC Bruce Patrick Henry BRUCE PATRICK HENRY ALBERI

The American Cubist painter Patrick Henry Bruce was an intimate of Gertrude and Leo Stein, the student of both William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, and the organizer of Matisse's school, as well as the friend of fellow-American Edware Hopper and Man Ray. He once lived above Matisse's apartment, loaned Picasso money, and was "like family" to Sonia and Robert Delaunay. Yet when he committed suicide in New York City on November 12, 1936, he was virtually unknown. He had not exhibited since 1930, in Paris, where he had lived from 1904 until his return to New York a few months before his death. This direct descendant of the American Revolutionary patriot, a taciturn, self-effacing perfectionist, had become more and more withdrawn from the world, from his family, and from his colleagues. In his last years he destroyed his papers, most of his paintings, and finally himself. Bruce did his best to leave this world without a trace. Only a fragment of his work survived. . .
Patrick Henry Bruce emerges as mass of contradictions: a dandy, an aesthete, and an aristocrat withe the habits of a monk; a critic who did not write, a connoisseur who did not sell, a modernist who thought the twentieth century was a mistake; dedicated, committed artist who lived out his life in his paintings and died convinced that his work would not be understood. . . Bruce never wrote a word about his art. But what he had to communicate is alive, powerful and authentic in those few paintings that did survive.

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