A Very Limited Biography of an Unknown Artist By Joseph Filocomo
Stefan Achilles is an unknown artist. He never sold any of his work. It was simply too personal to share with the public. There’s scant information on him, with the exception of some public records and a few letters to his friend, the sculptor, Philip Pavia. Stefan was born in Bridgeport, CT in 1905, a booming industrial center whose factories attracted immigrant workers from around the world. Like his father, he worked for Coulter & McKenzie, Inc, a company that specialized in industrial machinery. Both of his parents were born in poverty stricken southern Italy and immigrated to the United States in search of the American dream. Stefan married a local librarian in 1946 and moved to neighboring Milford, a beachfront community, where he died 1990.
He was a factory worker whose real passion in life was art. His story is similar to that of the photographer Vivian Maier, a full time nanny whose obsession was street photography. She never published or sold her work, as well. They were both fiercely private artists who hoarded their output for dear life. Stefan’s work was recently resurrected from a garage. It probably hadn’t seen the light of day since the artist neatly stacked it in boxes decades ago. Along with his art was a copy of It Is Magazine from 1959, one piece of stationary with his name and address, and a legal size Coulter & McKenzie, Inc envelope. Out of the thousands of paintings (all on paper of various sizes), only two were signed (one Stefan, the other Achilles). His intention was, it seems, that they should never be seen.
Stefan was an abstract expressionist from the very birth of this new, revolutionary and audacious art style in the 1950’s. His work was spontaneous, experimental, and nonrepresentational, that is, no recognizable images (he did, however, paint a series of nudes and rather ghostly abstract faces). Stefan’s preferred medium was ink and paper, unlike most other members of this school who preferred oil and large canvases. He also experimented with lithography, not a common medium among abstract expressionists. Stefan worked feverishly on his kitchen table or, at times, in a make shift toolshed/studio in his yard. Sometimes, he even left a trail of inky fingerprints behind on his work. On occasion, he would scribble a spontaneous thought on the margins of the paper. One poignant example is: “we who are dead will never cease to love you.” Or, on another work, he scribbled: “perche?” (why?, in Italian).
Philip Pavia and Stefan Achilles were lifelong friends from Bridgeport. Pavia, in 1948, founded The Club, a community of rather poor artists and writers who met regularly in a dingy flat in the Village on East 8th street to discuss art, philosophy, religion, and life. Some of the early members included: Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Milton Resnick, and Landes Lewitin, to name a few. The Club became the vanguard of this strange, iconoclastic art movement that desperately sought legitimacy among collectors, galleries, museums, and the New York art establishment as a whole. Stefan, was not an active member of The Club; however, he went there occasionally, sometimes with his friend Yayoi Kusama. He preferred the safety of job and home over the unpredictable Bohemian lifestyle of a Greenwich Village renegade. Stefan had his pulse on the New York abstract art movement, though, through Pavia, who encouraged him to put black ink aside for a while and experiment with color paints on paper. He was also friends with writer and poet Emanuel Navaretta, an early member of The Club, and dear friend from Bridgeport, CT, as well. Stefan’s letters to Pavia, part of the Philip Pavia and Natalie Edgar Archive at Emory University, show Stefan and Navaretta lending words of encouragement to Pavia in his struggle against skeptical art critics, especially, the influential Dore Ashton.
The only time that Stefan allowed any of his works to be released to the public was when two ink paintings appeared in It Is Magazine in 1959 (see below). This was the only magazine dedicated, at the time, to abstract expressionism. The founder and guiding light was Philip Pavia, until it ceased publication in 1965. Stefan’s work appeared alongside that of Sam Francis, Motherwell, and the de Koonings. The index on the last page simply described him as “a painter from Connecticut”. This was the first and last time the work of this enigmatic artist was seen, until now.
Yayoi Kusama and Stefan Achilles
Yayoi arrived in NYC on June 28th, 1958. She had little money, spoke little English, and had few friends.* She did have, however, lots of enthusiasm and big dreams. Greenwich Village was, at this time, the center of the art world (especially abstract expressionism) and, as the song goes, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. It was the place to be.
One of the first people Yayoi contacted was Philip Pavia, founder of The Club and editor of the new and audacious It Is Magazine.* Stefan Achilles notes, in one of his diaries, that he first met Yayoi in November, 1958 through Pavia, his lifelong friend from Bridgeport, CT.
A friendship developed between Yayoi and Achilles that lasted at least from 1958 to 1962. Achilles writes, in an entry, that he and Yayoi, one New Years Eve, went to five or six parties and finally ended up at The Club with a group of friends, where he was a member.
Achilles was also friends with Matsumi “Mike” Kanemitsu, the well known abstract expressionist, and would spend time in his studio, observing him at work. It seems quite likely that Achilles was deeply influenced by both Yayoi and Kanematsu in embracing Japanese sumi-e painting, particularly simple black ink, sumi brushes and spontaneous brush strokes. In a letter to Pavia in 1959, Achilles boasts that his goal is to become the worlds foremost sumi artist. Achilles further writes in a diary entry that 1958 was a transformational year in his development as an artist. This is when he met Yayoi.
As an interesting side note, in an entry dated 1-7-1969, Achilles makes a list of former love interests: Yayoi was one of them.
References:
*Midori Yamamura Kusama Yayoi’s Early Years in New York: A Critical Biography https://www.academia.edu
Stefan Achilles Letters to Philip Pavia. Philip Pavia and Natalie Edgar Archive. Emory University, Stuart A. Rose Library. Series 2: It Is Magazine.
Stefan Achilles Diaries and Personal Papers. The Stefan Achilles Archive/Joseph Filocomo Archivist
