From the Woolworth Tower

Soon after he came to the U.S. from Spain in 1924, Painter Julio de Diego found himself with exactly 25^ to his name. He paid a dime for a ride to the top of the Woolworth Building (then the world's tallest), and gaily flung the other 15^ over Manhattan's skyline. Says De Diego: "I wanted to start from scratch."

He went on to become a respected painter whose work was hung in top U.S. museums. Last week De Diego won new honor and some more welcome cash: first prize ($2,000) in the "Steel, Iron and Men" exhibition at Alabama's Birmingham Museum of Art. Explains able Museum Director Richard F. Howard: "All that we asked was that [the artists] think about steel and iron . . . and of the men of many races, giants in body or mind, who dig the ores or make the metals . . ." De Diego's prizewinner (one of 500 entries) was a brilliantly colored fantasy called Activity Across the River, which showed a group of unworldly creatures working on a great mass of red and blue machinery along a riverbank. De Diego got the idea watching the Staten Island shipyards from a ferry.

Kitchen Murals. In his 53 years, wiry, cadaverous De Diego (who claims that he has gypsy blood) has tried his hand at everything from bullfighting to being the husband of a stripteaser. The son of a Madrid jeweler, Julio (pronounced "Hoolio'' even in Manhattan) left home at the age of 15, when his father objected to his artistic bent. He painted scenery for the Madrid opera, danced in Serge Diaghilev's ballet, went into the Spanish army to fight the Rifs in Africa. In 1923 De Diego set out to see the world. After his defiant gesture atop the Woolworth Building he got a job doing fashion illustrations, painted murals for kitchens and bathrooms, designed menus.

He had his first major show in Chicago in 1932, was recognized as a promising new artist. Among his favorite subjects are the Machine Age's giant factories and towering cities. Probably his best-known painting is The Portentous City, 1942-43, a vertical view of Manhattan's clustered skyscrapers, which hangs in Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Prince Consort. In 1948, De Diego splashed onto the front pages by marrying Ecdysiast Gypsy Rose Lee, who declared: 'Julio and I can be happy together. I'm working on a play, Julio has his art, and we spend our evenings together." This bliss did not last, although the De Diegos are still legally married and remain good friends.* Says Julio: "I was not cut out to be prince consort. What is a man that he should have to follow his wife around?" Julio now lives alone in a grubby, two-room Manhattan studio, where he prominently displays a skull which he jokingly introduces to visitors as his-late father's.

He cooks lavishly (specialty of the house: spicy paella) and manufactures jewelry as a sideline. He is also working on a monumental history of the gypsies. De Diego has been an enthusiastic U.S. citizen since 1941. Said he last week as he flew off to Birmingham to collect his $2,000: "In Europe, they only pretend to know what is good. In America, they know."

* From an earlier marriage De Diego has a daughter, Kiriki, now 26. After the marriage broke up, De Diego took the four-year-old girl to his friend, Industrialist Paul Hoffman, whom he first met while decorating the Hoffman playroom; the Hoffmans raised Kiriki as their own.

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