Stefan Achilles (1905-1990):

  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, 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. She left thousands of photos and negatives to luckily be discovered after here death. 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 & McKennzie 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 50’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, probably on his kitchen table, after a long days work. Sometimes, he even left a trail of inky fingerprints behind.Also, on occasion, he would scribble a thought on the margins of his work.   One poignant example is: “we who are dead will never cease to love you.”In 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 ocassionally, 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 friend also from Bridgeport. Stefan’s letters to Pavia, part of the Philip Pavia and Natalie Edgar Archive at Emory University, show Stefan and Navaretta encouraging 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.

Photos by Thomas Patsenka