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"Someone once said if I was left on an island I'd reconstruct the rocks. I have a need to say I was here."
Anthony Quinn spent his life following this credo - leaving his mark on the world. He was born under the gunfire of the revolution in Chihuahua, Mexico in 1915 to a half-Irish father, Frank Quinn, and a Mexican-Indian mother, Manuela Oaxaca, who both marched under the banner of Pancho Villa. Manuela and Frank were seperated when she became pregnant with Anthony and was forced to leave the battlefield. When he was only eight months old, his mother hid Anthony in a coal wagon and escaped to El Paso, Texas. They would not find Frank Quinn again until Anthony was almost three years old. Poverty led them to search for work and they eventually settled in Los Angeles where Frank worked at Zelig's Studio training as a cameraman.
When Anthony was 11, his fahter was tragically struck outside their home by an automobile. Anthony vowed to support, sister, and grandmother. He started skipping school and working odd jobs to support the family. Anthony entered an architectural design contest his junior year of high school with a plan for a marketplace and he was named the winner with the prize to study and work with Frank Lloyd Wright.
Wright taught him that the average man does not know how to live, and that it is the architect's role to build not to the physical size of the man, but to the size of his spirit. Finally, someone had put into words the hunger that Anthony had felt all his life- to live and create to the size of man's spirit.
Wright also taught him that a good architect must be able to convince people how they should live and he sent him to the Katherine Hamil acting school to improve his speech. He worked as a janitor to pay for his lessons and when one actor fell ill, Anthony was asked to take his part in the school paly. Thus began his career as an actor. When he asked Wright whether he should continue to act or pursue his career as architect- Wright told him that there would always time to become an architect.
Quinn went on to act in more than 250 films including La Strada, Viva Zapata, Lust for Life, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and Zorba the Greek. He received two Academy Awards and six nominations throughout his career.
Quinn also painted and sculpted, though it was not until the 80's that he discovered that he could have another career as an artist. Anthony finished his last motion picture Avenging Angelo in Toronto in May 2001. Anthony Quinn died of respirtory failure at the age of 86.
Property from the Estate of Anthony Quinn
Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979)
Prepatory Studies for Self Portrait no.383
Details
Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979)
Prepatory Studies for Self Portrait no.383
signed and dated 'Sonia Delaunay-Terk 1916' (lower left)
encaustic, gold and silver paint on paper
13 x 8¾ in. (33 x 22.2 cm.)
Painted in 1916
Prepatory Studies for Self Portrait no.383
signed and dated 'Sonia Delaunay-Terk 1916' (lower left)
encaustic, gold and silver paint on paper
13 x 8¾ in. (33 x 22.2 cm.)
Painted in 1916
Provenance
Everett Ellin Gallery, Los Angeles.
Acquired from the above by the late owner.
Acquired from the above by the late owner.