Paul Swan

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Paul Swan (born June 6, 1883 in Ashland , Illinois , † February 1, 1972 in Bedford Hills , NY ) was an American actor, dancer, painter and poet.

biography

Born in Ashland, Illinois in 1883, Swan had been a student at the Art Institute of Chicago since 1900 . In 1903 he came to New York City , where he initially found a job as an illustrator. At that time he saw the famous Ballets Russes of the impresario Sergei Dyagilev and portrayed the Russian actress Alla Nazimova . With the proceeds from the sale of his paintings, he went to Greece, where he studied ancient sculpture and took dance lessons.

Swan was first known for his portraits. He painted Charles Lindbergh , British Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald and the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini . In 1914 he had an exhibition with Robert Henri , Maurice Prendergast and Rockwell Kent at the Macbeth Gallery , and later he achieved fame with his sculptural work at the National Academy of Design in New York. In the 1930s he won several prizes at the Salon des Artistes in Paris , where he lived for ten years. In Stony Creek , New York State, he founded an artist colony.

As an actor and dancer, Swan first worked for Arthur Hammerstein at the Victoria Theater in New York and then toured the United States and Great Britain with the Sir Ben Greet Shakespeare Company . After a first role in Diana the Huntress (1918), he achieved fame as a film actor in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1923) . In the 1930s and 1940s, Swan was celebrated as a solo dancer on tours around the world. In the fall of 1965 Andy Warhol shot a 66-minute film portrait of the 82-year-old artist and gave him one of the leading roles in his experimental film Camp .

Swan died in Bedford Hills, New York in February 1972.

literature

  • Janis Londraville, Richard Londraville: The Most Beautiful Man in the World. Paul Swan, from Wilde to Warhol. University of Nebraska Press 2006, ISBN 0-8032-2969-0 . ( limited preview in Google Book search).

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