FALLS VILLAGE — Painter Robert Cronin provided an overview of his career – including a close encounter with Pablo Picasso – at the David M. Hunt Library Thursday, Aug. 13, shortly after the opening of his current exhibit of paintings on the library’s ArtWall, on view through Sept. 11.
While Cronin, 90, is known today for his prolific body of work including abstract paintings, he began his foray into art with an attempt at industrial design — an attempt to make a 14-inch model of an automobile, to be more specific.
Cronin said that in the 1950s, General Motors sponsored a competition that brought select young designers to the Midwest to meet GM executives.
“If you won first prize in your state, you were flown to Detroit,” Cronin said of the contest, in which he saw some success, although he wasn’t invited to Michigan.
He participated throughout all four years of high school in the early 1950s and earned honorable mention a couple of times. As a prize, he remembers winning an X-Acto knife set, which impressed the young man.
Cronin said his interest gradually shifted from industrial design to fine art, and at the Rhode Island School of Design he “made an impression” on the faculty and fellow students with an exercise he completed for “2D class.”
“The professor hung it over a window for the whole semester,” Cronin recounted.
During the talk, he showed two slides: one a portrait of his girlfriend at the time and one self-portrait, along with photos of his abstract art pieces.
“I enjoyed the instinctive connection of abstraction and the discipline of representation,” he said.
Ultimately, Cronin’s career went in the abstract direction.
In 1969, now an established artist and art teacher, Cronin and his wife, Connie, traveled to Nice, France, and the surrounding area for a five-week stay.
One day they decided to drive to the nearby town of Vallauris to see Pablo Picasso’s pottery at the Galerie Madoura.
As they left the gallery, a Lincoln Continental pulled up, looking ostentatious and out of place.
Pablo Picasso, a very small man, emerged from the Lincoln, a very large car.
“He was wearing a bathrobe, basically,” Cronin said. “We just flipped.”
Connie managed to take a furtive snapshot, but they didn’t want to impose.
So they went for lunch instead.
On the way back to their car, the Lincoln appeared again, heading toward them.
“I said, you wave, I’ll get the picture.”
Picasso, recognizing them from the earlier encounter, leaned out the window and said ‘bonjour’ with a big smile. “He had such a happy face,” Cronin said.
Cronin had a Kodak Instamatic camera and, although he got a photo of Picasso going by in the passenger seat of the Lincoln, it wasn’t “THE” photo.
“This would have been a famous, iconic photo,” said Cronin. “But I missed it.”
