Biddle in Brazil

The Duke of Windsor, then Prince of Wales, was once told he was going to be introduced to "one of the Biddies." Asked he: "What's a Biddle?" Last week Rio de Janeiro learned about the most unorthodox of living Biddies: George,* who was born in Philadelphia, went to Groton & Harvard, but turned out to be an artist. The first U.S. artist ever commissioned by a South American country to decorate public buildings, he had done two murals for Brazil's massive National Library.

They were unveiled last week before Brazilian Minister of Education Gustavo Capanema, U.S. Ambassador Jefferson Caffery, and a group of bearded granfinos (swells) leaning majestically on umbrellas.

One Biddle panel showed an awesome skeleton astride a bony steed skimming over burning Brazilian villages. The other depicted a peaceful landscape wherein a big-busted nude descended from the clouds toward three nude men, a woman and a child (see cut). Said tweedy Artist Biddle:

"There are two implications: in panel one, the need of Western Hemisphere defense against suicidal Europe; in panel two, the thesis that we in America prefer to live by the philosophy of education and kindliness. The only personality I have permitted myself to indulge in is Goebbels, represented by the clubfooted horse."

Said Minister Capanema in honeyed Portuguese: "The precious works you have done are an invitation to ... the choice between the way of violence and the way of love." Cultivated Artist Biddle then thanked the Minister in Portuguese.

* Brother of U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle.

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