A Letter from Linda...
South of the Border
January 9, 2012
Dear cherished friends and readers,
To
kick off the New Year, I’d like to share with you an exhilarating
experience I had on my holiday vacation. I went to Cuernavaca, Mexico
for some R&R and Spanish lessons, and discovered a treasure at the
Robert Brady Museum.
I had never heard of Robert Brady, and was utterly unprepared for the
intimate connection I immediately felt with his art and design,
particularly his use of color. I knew I had found a kindred spirit.
Robert
Brady was a painter, a designer and a collector of decorative art from
around the world. He was born in Iowa in the 1920s, studied art in the
U.S., and lived in Venice where he met another famous collector, Peggy
Guggenheim, who turned out to be his mentor and lifelong friend. In his
early thirties, Brady traveled to Mexico where his imagination and
creativity went full tilt. He bought a 16th century
Franciscan Monastery to live in, which included an observatory in a
tower that he used as his studio. He called it Casa de Torre.
At his direction, the museum is and will remain preserved exactly as he
left it when he died, down to the plants in the pots and the fabrics
that will be used to replace the current ones when they deteriorate from
the Mexican sun. It is, to my mind, a visceral study in color,
attention to detail, and an unerring sense of design.