Taos, New Mexico Art Galleries: DH Lawrence

Don't miss one of the most interesting Taos, New Mexico art galleries!

Today the La Fonda is the only place worldwide to view representations of the "D H Lawrence Forbidden Art" collection.

The original collection consists of nine oil paintings from an exhibition of thirteen that were confiscated by the police in 1929 from the Dorothy Warren Gallery of London. At that time, Lawrence’s reputation was already shrouded in negative publicity around the suppression of his novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) and the seizure of another novel, The Rainbow (1915). Though the images are mild by today’s standards, early 20th century Victorian England viewed  D H Lawrence as a rebel and a spokesman for sexual freedom. As a result, the paintings were deemed obscene and banned in London August 8, 1929. The paintings were in danger of being destroyed until Lawrence, who was living in Italy at the time, agreed to remove them from English soil never to be returned, a ruling that exists today.

Lawrence’s first serious piece was painted in Italy in 1926. Legend has it that Maria Huxley, wife of Aldous Huxley, inspired Lawrence’s obsession with painting by giving him a set of four canvases that had been left in the Huxley’s Florence home. This first oil is entitled A Holy Family and depicts a man about to kiss a semi-nude woman, watched by a small child.

Lawrence and his wife Frieda first visited Taos on invitation by art patroness Mabel Dodge Sterne Luhan. The Lawrences arrived in Taos on September 11, 1922, his 37th birthday. D H Lawrence wrote of his first impressions of Taos shortly after: “In the magnificent fierce morning of New Mexico, one sprang awake, a new part of the soul woke up suddenly and the old world gave way to the new.” Mabel gifted the Lawrences with 160 acres of land 20 miles north of Taos on a mountain slope that came to be known as the Kiowa Ranch. In return, Frieda gave Mabel the original manuscript of Sons and Lovers. Lawrence lived in Taos less than two years, between 1922 and 1925, but it was the only time he lived in America and the only property he ever owned. DH Lawrence died of tuberculosis in Vence, France on March 1, 1930.

Frieda returned to Taos a few years after her husband’s death with her Italian lover, Angelo Ravagli, who became her husband in 1950. On September 11, 1935, they interred Lawrence’s ashes in a shrine on the Kiowa Ranch, which is now open to visitors. Frieda died in August 1956. That year Ravagli sold the nine oil paintings to Saki Karavas, then owner of the La Fonda de Taos. Karavas, an avid art collector and Lawrence fan, hung the paintings in his office at the hotel where they remained until his death in 1996. Unmarried, Karavas left the paintings and the hotel to the five children of long-time friends,
George and Cordelia Sahd.

Today, DH Lawrence is viewed by many to have been one of the greatest literary figures of the 20th century though he said of painting “it gave me a form of pleasure that words can never give….”

Why are the paintings in Taos and how did they get here?

Saki Karavas, b. 1922, d. 1996
Saki Karavas was the son of James and Noula Karavas. Brothers, James and John, had immigrated to New York from Greece and arrived in Taos in 1922 when Saki was 5 years old. The brothers leased a restaurant in the Columbian Hotel and later purchased the hotel. In the early 1930’s they began to make major renovations, adding a 2nd floor, to the Columbian Hotel and re-opened it in 1937 as the La Fonda de Taos. After the death of his father James, Saki Karavas bought out his uncle John in 1953 and ran the hotel until his death in 1996.

The hotel was always an art center. Ernest Blumenshein, Bert Phillips and other members of Taos Society of Artists met here on a regular basis and hung many of their paintings in the lobby of the hotel. While its not certain whether Saki, or his parents, encountered or knew D. H. Lawrence himself, he was well acquainted and good friends with the “Lawrence women", Frieda Lawrence, Mabel Dodge Luhan and Lady Dorothy Brett, as well as Millicent Rogers and Georgia O’Keefe. Saki was a serious art collector and quite a Taos figure. His love for women earned him the title of the “Don Juan of Taos”.

Saki was a big fan of D H Lawrence and owned several first editions of his literary works. When Frieda Lawrence died in August of 1956 her estate, which included the Lawrence paintings, passed on to her then husband Angelino Ravagli. Later that same year Angelino sold them to Saki. He never would disclose what he paid for them and, though he received many generous offers over the years, he refused to sell them. Thus, never married, he bequeathed his hotel and the paintings to his good friend, George Sahd’s family. Today the hotel and the paintings have been lovingly restored, preserving two Taos treasures in one of the most interesting Taos, New Mexico art galleries.

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