WINDY CITY MYSTIC

Into the austere, windy surf scene on the opposite page, into the realistic but unreal city below it, Raymond Breinin (rhymes with winin' & dinin') has put the quality that sets him apart from most of his Midwestern contemporaries: his mystical imagination.

Many of Breinin's imaginary landscapes, like The City, introduce medieval figures of religion or enchantment into modern, urban scenes. Others actually show medieval streets peopled with monks and harlequins. Still others, like The Beach, are dry, pastel-shaded landscapes in which human figures take on the impersonal quality of the sand and sea against which they move.

Breinin's craft and delicacy as a painter have made him one of the most famous of younger U.S. artists, brought him prizes in many recent competitions (TIME, Nov. 17, March 23) and made important museums prize his work.

Son of a provincial Russian tobacco merchant, Raymond Breinin came to the U.S. at the age of 14. A dark, bird-faced man of solitary habits, he works today in a small studio near Chicago's busy North State Street, undisturbed by the groaning and rumbling of a neighboring trolley line. One of his favorite mediums is gouache, a mixture of opaque colors with gum arable and water, which gives his paintings a subdued, somewhat chalky finish. He likes to play the guitar in solitude and speculate quietly about what he calls "the wonderful mysteriousness of life."

Says he: "I somehow wish that artists today believed in angels and devils and would be more impressed by the magic of nature."

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