MARION PINTO

PINTO--Marion. 1935-2010. American artist Marion Pinto died peacefully on September 21st in the SoHo loft in which she had lived and worked for 42 years. An early pioneer of the SoHo artists' district, she created one of the first images of the coming of age of SoHo when she was commissioned to paint a large mural for The Ballroom restaurant depicting several SoHo art world figures. The painting is now in the permanent collection of The Museum of the City of New York. Always something of a feminist, Pinto had the first one-woman show ever mounted at SoHo's Leslie/ Lohman Gallery (1975) entitled "Man As A Sex Object." The models for the voluptuous male nudes, both straight and gay, were artist friends and young men she picked up at "The Firehouse" a disused fire house which had become the headquarters for an early gay rights organization, The Gay Activists Alliance, conveniently located just across the street from her loft. It was in that same period that she painted the dual nude of Fritz Lohman and Charles Leslie which later hung in Bologna's Museo d'Arte Moderna in the mammoth exhibition entitled "Il Nudo". Marion was an integral part of the early SoHo arts phenomenon and fully engaged in the fights to legalize loft living and to save the neighborhood from physical demolition. She traveled extensively covering wide swatches of Europe, Asia and North Africa. Each journey resulted in wonderful series of paintings such as the collection simply called "Egypt" and another called "Japan," where she spent a year in a visiting artist program. Marion is remembered by her many friends and lovers not only as a richly talented artist, but as a marvelously intelligent, witty and loyal friend, and as someone utterly devoted to the City of New York. There will be a memorial celebration of Marion's life and work at The Leslie/ Lohman Gallery, 26 Wooster Street in SoHo on Sunday, December 5th from 4-6pm.