Alix Amador French
Alix Amador French, 1921 - 2006
Alix Amador was born in New York City to Rosalind H. and Raoul A. Amador. She was a granddaughter of Dr. Raoul Arturo Amador, former Minister of Panama to France and England and former president of the League of Nations Council, and a great-granddaughter of Dr. Manuel Amador, first President of the Republic of Panama. She attended Cooper Union School of Art in New York City. In 1939 she married Nathaniel Rockwood French. They moved to Dayton in 1946 where she grew to be an accomplished and recognized artist, active at the Dayton Art Institute and The Dayton Visual Arts Center; the Solway Gallery in Cincinnati represented her work. Her drawings, paintings and constructions are held in numerous business and private collections. A large body of her work was donated to Sinclair Community College in 2008.
The Art of Alix Amodor French
Alix Amador French, New York born and educated in art at Cooper Union, was a mainstay and pervasive influence in the Dayton art scene for many years. She claimed to have been “born with a pencil and a paintbrush in each hand” and acknowledged her work as “a compulsion and an intense desire to make a thing, to see what you’re thinking, in work and play.”
With a long term interest in architectural forms, her work progressed over the years from color field and grids through modular arrangements and structural themes derived from nature, like the spiral structure of seeds and shells, or the game patterns of the geometrically-based Chinese game of Tangrams. The Tangram is a way of dividing a square into triangular elements and rearranging them into suggestions of natural and organic forms, here played by the artist and meant to be finalized within the eye and mind of the beholder.
French described this process: “the triangle is a symbol of harmony and the true center is a mirror. Isn’t it a miracle, marching around it, cutting out all the pieces and playing a game. You start in the middle and develop out, beginning to understand complexity; you make your own rules but your have integrity about how you play. Occasionally a painting sets itself up with no decisions, like a Nantucket sleigh ride when the wind is just right and you just move with it.”
Some of French’s work suggests low-relief dimensionality, related to earlier work which optically transformed while viewers perspective and position changed. Painted modules were cut out and reapplied to a canvas ground into interlocking and expanding relational patterns. Other series were based on the structure of the Chambered Natutilus shell, derived from unconscious associations with the sense of primitive cultures surrounded by nature, or based on the Golden Section, the simplest asymmetrical proportion divined by the Greeks and later immortalized by Leonardo.
French has assimilated her own methodology of dividing Five-sided figures into enveloping large canvases, imbued with rich colorations of gradated and contrasting areas of the primordial color wheel. These formations suggest stained glass and architectural accretions while entertaining the eye with elegance of more than mere decorative sensibility, like constructivist Mandalas.
There is much to be learned from French’s aesthetic philosophy: “The strange thing is that there are no two identical arrangements, like a thumbprint or an Albers square. Even with the most rigid format you make discoveries, with limitless possibilities, but you have to acknowledge and operate with a sense of play; real play is fitting the parts together with true inventiveness.
- Jud Yalkut, 2008
Flow
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
62" h. x 74"
2008.2.1
Location: Building 9, 2nd Floor
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Wood
79" h. x 90"
2008.2.2
Location: Building 13, Basement/Floor 0
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
87" h. x 87"
2008.2.3
Location: Building 13, 3rd Floor
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
45" h. x 96"
2008.2.4
Location: Building 13, Basement/Floor 0
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
36" h. x 48"
2008.2.5
Location: Englewood
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
92" h. x 92"
2008.2.6
Location: Building 12, 3rd Floor
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
56" h. x 56"
2008.2.7
Location: Building 12, 3rd Floor
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Oil on Canvas
78" h. x 57"
2008.2.8
Location: Building 13, Basement/Floor 0
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
40" h. x 38"
2008.2.9
Location: Not on Display
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic & Collage
20" h. x 20"
2008.2.10
Location: Not on Display
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
60" h. x 60"
2008.2.11
Location: Englewood
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic & Collage
20" h. x 20"
2008.2.12
Location: Not on Display
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic & Collage
20" h. x 20"
2008.2.13
Location: Not on Display
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
60" h. x 66"
2008.2.14
Location: Building 12, 3rd Floor
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Oil on Canvas
30" h. x 20"
2008.2.15
Location: Not on Display
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Oil on Canvas
52" h. x 64"
2008.2.16
Location: Not on Display
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
56" h. x 64"
2008.2.17
Location: Building 13, Basement/Floor 0
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
75" h. x 75"
2008.2.18
Location: Building 13, 3rd Floor
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
86" h. x 86"
2008.2.19
Location: Building 9, 2nd Floor
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Wood
16" h. x 16" each
2008.2.21.A, 2008.2.21.B, 2008.2.21.C
Location: Not on Display
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
40" h. x 33"
2008.2.22
Location: Not on Display
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Oil on Canvas
57" h. x 44"
2008.2.23
Location: Not on Display
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic & Collage
56" h. x 64"
2008.2.24
Location: Not on Display
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Oil on Canvas
30" h. x 30"
2008.2.25
Location: Not on Display
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic & Collage
32" h. x 34"
2008.2.26
Location: Not on Display
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
65" h. x 96"
2008.2.27
Location: Building 12, 3rd Floor
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
66" h. x 96"
2008.2.28
Location: Building 12, 3rd Floor
Red Tree
Alix Amador French
Acrylic & Collage
67" h. x 73"
2008.2.29
Location: Building 13, Basement/Floor 0
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
64" h. x 64"
2008.2.30
Location: Building 13, Basement/Floor 0
Untitled
Alix Amador French
Acrylic & Collage
55" h. x 109"
2008.2.31
Location: Building 13, Basement/Floor 0
Tangram XII
Alix Amador French
Acrylic on Canvas
75" h. x 100"
2008.2.32
Location: Building 9, 2nd Floor
Moonrise
Alix Amador French
Acrylic & Collage
85" h. x 85"
2008.2.33
Location: Building 12, 3rd Floor