Les Trente

With a flourish the Chambrun Galleries invited the New York art world last week to a show proudly titled "Les Trente, a representative showing of the work of 30 modern French painters." The modern French painters bore such disturbingly un-French names as Foujita, Friesz, Kvapil, Carlu, Mutter, Hecht, Van Dongen, but apart from the accident of birth the subtitle was justified. These artists have not only made France their physical and spiritual home, but their training, their technique, their outlook, is as Parisian as a bottle of Pernod. One other thing was noticeable: Les Trente were completely modern in their technique but it was a suave, well-tempered modernism. Here was a group of artists who have arrived, spiritually, socially, financially. A little bronze by the late Antoine Bourdelle, one of the greatest of modern sculptors, looked as uncomfortable as Thomas Hardy at a literary teaparty.

Among Les Trente was a debutante. Vivacious, blonde Mme Natacha Carlu gave the first formal showing of her work with a group of five paintings. Sure of herself, she not only made her debut against such talented opposition as Pablo Picasso, Tsugoharu Foujita, and the bearded, elegant Kees Van Dongen, but she asked as much for her work ($1,000 per canvas) as for any picture in the room.

Natacha Carlu's original ambition was not painting but medicine. She is descended from a long line of Russian doctors. While studying medicine in Paris she met and married famed Architect Jacques Carlu, Director of the Fontainebleau School of Fine Arts. Architect Carlu did not fancy a doctor for a wife; he asked her to give up her studies so that she could accompany him on his travels. In Rome Mme Carlu began to paint, with the enthusiastic approval of her husband. But he would not let her go to art school, lest it affect her individuality.

Architect Carlu is now head professor of architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but the Carlus live and practice in Manhattan. Their home is her studio, and more homelike than studious. But there was nothing amateur about the pictures she exhibited last week. They were gay, finely drawn, cleverly decorative in bright dressmaker's colors. They seemed eminently salable. Artist Carlu dimples as she admits that she was responsible for the sophisticated murals in the second floor lounge of Boston's Ritz-Carlton. "I did the figures," she says, "and my husband put in the landscape."

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