Americans in Paris

G.I.s visiting Paris want to see the Eiffel Tower, the Folies Bergere, and Pablo Picasso. Their interest in art gen erally and Picasso in particular has astonished art dealers, Artist Picasso and the Red Cross, which handles their enter tainment requests.

The first to find their way to Picasso's huge, messy duplex studio at No. 7 rue des Grands Augustins were two cherubic-looking 9th Air Force sergeants. French phrase books clutched in their hands, Gerland Gildner and Eugene van Sant clattered in with a musette bag full of gifts. They dumped their presents happily onto a canvas which lay on the table -- a Paris street scene which would probably later sell for 150,000 francs ($3,000).

Picasso was delighted. He admired the K rations and the Velvet tobacco, kissed van Sant on both cheeks.

Since then the Red Cross has been run ning tours to the studio. Hundreds of G.I.s have heard that Picasso is a swell guy and that he can-be seen any morning between eleven and one. Picasso, who cherishes his morning salons and prefers his . conversations in French and Spanish, finally began to feel like an exhibit in a zoo. And he got sick & tired of K rations.

So he called a halt. Said the Red Cross: "We don't know what to do. All the boys want to see him. We just give them his address and tell them to try to get in on their own!" Just Big Kids. One afternoon when Picasso wanted to choose his own company or have none at all, three G.I.s, all bashful smiles and no French, arrived. Picasso let them have a look around his studio, then tried to make them understand that he was busy. They still made no move to leave. So, said Picasso, "I gave them a toy I had on my table ... a little box with a glass top and inside a few tiny balls that you keep rolling around until they drop in their sockets to make a pattern. ... I went on with my work. All afternoon the soldiers huddled together on three stools, playing with that little boy's game. When I was ready to go out myself, I had to show them that they must leave too. Just big kids."

Picasso's favorite soldier gift came last summer from an art student in a combat unit then fighting southeast of Paris. The soldier motorcycled in to see the artist. Picasso gave him a bath and a drink. The soldier noticed an empty coffee tin on the table; Picasso confessed that he liked coffee but couldn't get it. The soldier ran downstairs, climbed on his motorbike, lit out for the front. In a couple of hours he was back with a big tin of coffee.

Even if they cannot see Picasso now, the G.I.s in Paris can and do buy prints of his pictures. A Quai Saint Michel shopkeeper said that he sold American soldiers from one to six Picasso prints a day. (Next in order of popularity: Matisse, Gauguin, Bonnard, Goya, Toulouse-Lautrec.) "I am surprised," he said. "They know a lot about painting, just as much as the Germans, if not more." The prints and etchings range from 300 ($6) to 5,000 francs ($100), and the average G.I. collector spends 1,500 ($30).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.