Leo & I and the Ghost of Cézanne: A Memory of Art and Provence - Tapa blanda

Exploring the experience of his artistic growth, William Weyman's memoir is a moving and thought-provoking recollection of the formative years of his life as a painter and teacher. As an undergraduate at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, he had no way of knowing that the impulse to study in France would result in the life changing experience of meeting Leo Marchutz, artist, master lithographer, and Cézanne authority, or that the subsequent fifteen years would be spent studying, working, and teaching with the man he would forever consider his mentor. The memoir portrays those years in the life of this monumentally influential figure in the author's life as well as their founding in 1972 of the Marchutz School of Art which still operates in Aix-en-Provence today in affiliation with the Institute for American Universities. A poignant exploration of the nature of art, its blossoming within the narrator, and the final fifteen years of the life of a wonderfully evocative artist, Weyman's ode to his mentor and friend is as mesmerizing as a Cézanne painting. It captures the lighthearted and serious with equal aplomb, dancing in and out of light and shadow like related brushstrokes of color, captivating and entertaining as it renders whole a picture of disparate yet connected parts. Equal parts breathtaking and insightful, LEO & I and the Ghost of Cézanne: A Memory of Art and Provence is a fascinating depiction of a time of discovery and the flowering of a gift and its soul.

In 1961, William Weyman was an undergraduate student at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Following an impulse to study in France, he found his way to the Institute for American Universities in Aix-en-Provence where he met artist, master lithographer, and Cézanne authority Leo Marchutz. This encounter marked the beginning of his own personal and artistic metamorphosis, rooted in the landscape of Provence and the pervasive presence Cézanne’s spirit. The subsequent fifteen years would be spent studying, working, and teaching with the man he would forever consider his mentor. Weyman lived in the south of France for close to forty years, but the years he spent in Provence with Leo Marchutz were the most formative and edifying of his life as an aspiring artist. In 1972, Marchutz, Weyman, and fellow artist Samuel Bjorklund, founded the Marchutz School of Art which still operates in Aix-en-Provence today in affiliation with the Institute for American Universities. William Weyman now lives with his family in Savannah, Georgia, where he paints and is co-owner of the Daedalus Gallery.