An Inventory of His Collection in the Art Collection at the Harry Ransom
Center
Creator:
Bachardy, Don, 1934-
Title:
Don Bachardy Art Collection
Dates:
1962-1974, undated
Extent:
2 flat file drawers (11 items)
Abstract:
The Don Bachardy Art Collection
comprises eleven original portrait drawings by Don Bachardy. Most are of well-known
figures and acquaintances, as rendered in ink, conté crayon, pastel, or charcoal.
Call Number:
Art Collection AR-00011
Language:
English
Access:
Open for research. A minimum of twenty-four hours is required to pull art materials
to the Reading Room.
Administrative Information
Acquisition:
Purchases (R6488, R6853) 1975, and Gift (G11450), 1997
The portraitist and painter Don Bachardy was born May 18, 1934, in Hollywood,
California, to Jess and Glade Bachardy. Jess Bachardy was an airplane tool planner
at Lockheed Corporation, and Don grew up in a middle-class neighborhood. In early
childhood he started drawing, and his subjects were always people. As a
pre-adolescent, he developed an interest in the movies to which his mother took
him
and his older brother Ted, often to the disapproval of their father. Bachardy
considers his early love of movies a major influence, as he became interested
in
looking at people from gazing at close-ups of movie actors on the large screens.
From an early age he drew from photographs of actors.
After high school Bachardy enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles,
but
found that he hated it. He left UCLA and enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute
in
Los Angeles, and later studied for one year at the Slade Art School in London.
In
1961 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in London.
During his freshman year at UCLA, Bachardy was introduced to Christopher Isherwood.
In
1953 Bachardy moved into Isherwood's ocean-view home in Santa Monica, where they
lived together as lovers until Isherwood's death in 1986.
During his career as a portrait artist, Bachardy has done portraits of many
well-known figures and celebrities, including many of the movie stars he watched
as
a youth. He has also drawn many members of the literary circle of Isherwood
and W. H. Auden. In 1984 Bachardy received much publicity (and touched off a
controversy) when he used an expressionist style with bold colors for the official
portrait of Gov. Edmund G. Brown, Jr., to be hung in the California State Capitol
Building.
In 1968 Bachardy co-wrote with Isherwood the Broadway play A
Meeting by the River. Bachardy has also published collections of his
portraits, including Stars in My Eyes (1999) in which
he describes his methods and tells of his experiences of the thirty-three
celebrities included.
Sources:
Markel, Michelle. "Portrait Will Have California Touch."Los Angeles Times, 28 July 1983.
White, James. "On Don Bachardy."
http://www.americanartists.org/art/article_on_don_bachardy.htm (accessed October
14,
2003).
Scope and Contents
The Don Bachardy Art Collection comprises eleven original portrait drawings by Don
Bachardy. Most are of well-known figures and acquaintances, as rendered in ink,
conté crayon, pastel, or charcoal. The works are listed alphabetically by portrait
subject in the following Item List. Titles are transcribed from the items, and
cataloger's titles appear in brackets.
The portraits of Yannis Boras, E. M. Forster, Chester Kallman, Elizabeth Mayer, and
Igor Stravinsky are from the collection of Chester Kallman and W. H. Auden.
Related Material
Additional biographical material on Don Bachardy is found in magazine and newspaper
clippings in the Art Collection's vertical file.
