DON'T Miss the Zorn Show(s)!

If you haven't yet made it out to the Legion of Honor for the Anders Zorn show, you'd better get a move on. The show closes on Sunday, Feb. 2nd, and of course it is much better than any old silly Superbowl game could ever be.  So rearrange your weekend and make that journey way, way out to the nether lands of San Francisco.

You will be impressed. Especially with his watercolors (heck, I didn't even know he did watercolors. I thought he mostly did society portraits like John Singer Sargent).

Elsa Gonzalez Zorn

There is another Zorn worth knowing about, who also is a marvelous painter in both watercolor and oils. She is Elsa Gonzalez Zorn, not Swedish, but Spanish with a German mother. We met at my best guy's painting workshop in Italy this past fall. She was a star.

In Elsa's family, there is a clear understanding that it is a very good possibility that Anders Zorn is part of their tribe. In her own words:

Anders Zorn's father was Johann Leonhard Zorn, German Beer businessman, and, as you know, he never had the chance to meet him. Apparently, this affected him all his life, as we can read in his autobiographical notes. Anders' mother was a worker in the beer company and she became a single mother, so she had to work hard while raising the child.

As Anders was born in 1860, his father would be related to my mom's great-grandfather Zorn. That part of my family came from the very East of Germany, the Prussian part, which nowadays would be Poland. I have asked my mom many times about the origins of this name, since it is not a very common name, not even in Germany. She says that there is no information at all, because everything was destroyed during Germany's sad history before and during WWII.

I have been asked so may times if I am related to him, mainly at the Art Students league in NY, and I always said no. Now I see there is no way to know, so I think I will leave a door open to the possibility, as my mom says, it could be and no one can prove the opposite. :)  And I prefer that version, too.

To view Elsa's paintings, visit Siempre nos quedara (We will always be here)
And to see her films, visit ACIB: Elsa Gonzalez Zorn