collectors` edition jerry garcia jim messina dino danelli bob marley

popular artists. His co-worker at the
time: a young artist by the name of
Andy Warhol.
As Andy left to pursue a career in
“serious” art, Maurer expanded his
commercial art studio to tackle a wide
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industries. His position brought him into
contact with a group of artists whose
names are well-recognized today,
from Pollock to Rauschenberg, and
Maurer was strongly influenced by
their work and ideas as he developed
his own unique style of painting.
Throughout the mid-sixties, Maurer
continued his work in the music
industry, notably with famed British
recording artist Donovan, developing
album covers, poster designs, and
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during this period that Maurer’s work
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appearing in galleries in New York, Los
Angeles, and Paris.
In the early nineties, Maurer realized
that the empire of music and art
that he had helped to build left him
little time to pursue his true passion:
painting. He moved to Atlanta where
he has lived ever since, developing a
vast catalog of works and perfecting
his personal style. In the last decade,
his work has hung in a wide variety
of venues, including the Georgia
Capitol, the Carnegie Museum in
Oxnard, California, and the U.C.L.A.
campus.
His commissions include work for
organizations like ESPN and Motorsport
America magazine, as well as for
individuals such as David Bowie, Boy
George, and his old friend Donovan.
Artwork © 2011 Sidney Maurer
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302).'s
MUSIC & ART
COLLECTORS’ EDITION
JERRY
★GARCIA
JIM
★MESSINA
DINO
★DANELLI
BOB
★MARLEY
BOB
★MASSE
WES
★FREED
JERRY GARCIA PORTRAIT BY SIDNEY MAURER
© COURTESY MUSEUM MASTERS INTERNATIONAL
celebrity
icons
sidney
MAUrer—
“liFe is
A sonG”
by VICTOR FORBES
E
arlier in these pages, Jerry Garcia attributed a living spirit to each of his
guitar notes and Dino Danelli succinctly said, “When art is alive, feelings
are captured, otherwise it is just paint.” These sentiments and attributes are
perfectly apt in describing the work of Sidney Maurer. His current collection,
comprising some 300 (and growing) portraits of famous and important past
and present citizens of the world from Justin Bieber to Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, conveys their lives in luminous captured frozen moments that sparkle with joy, power
and confidence in a totally original, non-derivative style loaded with energy and creativity,
with masterful strokes and insightful characterization. Combining bold, dynamic colors with
painstaking layouts and typographical elements, the result is the unique blend of a painter’s
passion tempered with the calculating compositional eye of a graphic designer. He explores his
themes and subject matter primarily through symbols and personalities evoking pride, nostalgia,
and hope. What can be said for his portraits can indeed be said for the artist.
In a few conversations with Sidney Maurer from his studio in Atlanta Goergia, we
developed a kinship that extends deep as our mutual Bronx roots. He attended a special high
school for the gifted (a classmate was Anthony Benedetto — Tony Bennett) and went on to a
career in creativity that most of us can only dream about. It began in the music world where he
put on some man-tan and dark shades and played trumpet in a jazz band at the famed Savoy
Ballroom in Harlem. He also made the scene on the fabled 52nd Street in New York City,
home to small but intoxicating jazz clubs where he met the likes of Billie Holliday, Miles Davis,
Charlie Parker and all the other greats of the era. Then, one day with the brashness that comes
from being a self-described “smartass kid from the Bronx,” he hopped a train to Connecticut,
where Columbia Records was then located, and landed a job as an assistant art director at the
age of 17. As the music business with the advent of the vinyl long playing record exploded,
within a few years Maurer was operating his own art studio in Manhattan, landing a contract
to produce hudreds of album covers for Columbia’s subsidiary label, Epic. His studio/workshop
became a home away from home for the burgeoning music crowd and amidst the easels, work
tables, glue pots, T-squares and all the elements then involved in producing art for reproduction,
Maurer became one of the hottest graphic artists in New York City. This was expanded to
worldwide fame when he met the British pop star Donovan. Said Sid, “He was really a poet and
SIdnEy MauRER BIO
Sid Maurer is a man with many stories.
His long career in the world of Art
and Music began at seventeen
when he was hired as assistant art
director at Columbia Records in New
york City, where he spent weekends
playing trumpet in Jazz clubs for extra
money. In the period that followed,
the music business exploded, and
Maurer worked designing album
covers and promotional material for
came up to the label’s office in flowing robes, no
shoes, long hair and had his own concepts for
the artwork for his new album. He was quite
put off by the acrid business-like atmosphere
up there so we went over to my place, smoked
a joint and became friends.”
Sid managed to translate Donovan’s
concepts into some legendary and radically
creative album covers, along with a Hollywood
billboard which they painted together. Their
collaboration lasted for years with Sid branching
out to manage his musical career, documented
in Donovan’s autobiography, The Hurdy Gurdy
Man. Sid also gets a few pages in 2Stoned,
Andrew Loog Oldham’s autobiographical
> This page: Photograph of Sidney Maure; paintings of Justin bieber, Henry Fonda.
Opposite page: Painting of Michael Jackson
> Clockwise from top: paintings of Salvadore Dali; Marilyn Monroe; Woody Allen;
Humphrey Bogart; Liza Minelli; Duke Ellington.
account of his life as manager of The
Rolling Stones.
Sid’s resurgence today comes after
a few bad breaks both personally and
professionally, but at the age of 85 he is
once again approaching the pinnacle of
the creative world thanks to the support
of his childhood buddy, actor/producer
Allan Rich (Serpico) and the legendary art
marketer, Marilyn Goldberg, President of
Museum Masters International who told
me, “For many years my favorite song was
La Vie on Rose by Edith Piaf which simply
means ‘always seeing the glass half full and
life thru rose colored glasses.’ I so enjoyed
receiving a painting of this great singer
from Sidney that I couldn’t stop thinking of
countless ideas to develop an international
campaign to promote his art to the world. ”
Noted art dealer Michael Miller who
has sold millions of dollars worth of Andy
Warhols and operated some of the country’s
largest art galleries, concurs. “These paintings,
both individually and as a body of work, have
more gravitas than the silkscreens by Warhol,
not only because of the power of paint itself over
the use of inks, but because Maurer’s concern
with iconic figures (Einstein is just as stunning
and important a painting as Marilyn Monroe)
has more breadth and feels more compelling
than Andy’s primarily playful focus on celebrity.
Marilyn and Allan, in my humble opinion, have
a phenomenal artist on their hands.”
Even today, Sid will wake up two or three
times a night, come into the studio and work.
“That’s my life. That’s what I do and this is
what I intend to do until I die. It’s like having
a mistress. You don’t own her, she owns you. I
paint because it’s all inside of me. I have been
like this all of my life. In New York, I had a
record company and a publishing company. I
made a lot of money, lost a lot of money. The
stories go on forever. I made other people stars,
played in that land and moved to Atlanta. That’s
my creative life. It’s the journey I’m on and the
journey is finishing this collection.”
“Onward and upward,” he says. This is one
story surely to be continued.
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Artworks © 2011Sidney Maurer