Joseph Hirshhorn in Rome, 1968-1969

Joseph Hirshhorn in Rome, 1968 – 1969 - Visiting Carla Lavatelli in Via Margutta

It was some time at the end of the 60s that Joseph Hirshhorn decided to build his Museum in Washington, with the hope that people would forget his Canadian misfortune. It seems that the general public did forget, except the ones that lost all their lifetime savings. In 1969, Joseph Hirshhorn came to my studio in Rome. He was accompanied by Carla Panicali, of he Malborough Gallery, which represented me in Rome.

Panicali had started the Malborough Adventure in Rome immediately after the war, in collaboration with an American sergeant in the US army by the name of Lloyd and with financial help from various collectors (one of them a relative of Eugenia and Charlie Zadoc).

Lloyd followed by opening the Marlborough in London and in New York, in partnership with Mr Reed, who had also been an accountant and filed my income taxes. Mr Reed was a collector of my work and also relevant for Lloyd, as he knew exactly who were the artists that were selling the most. During the war, Mr Reed had given shelter to several of the Jewish artists who had fled to New York to escape the Nazi persecution. These artists in gratitude gave Mr Reed some of their work.

Therefore, he had put together an important collection of paintings, I remember some very beautiful ones by Marc Chagall.

Joseph was very impressed by my work and, I might add, he also appreciated the Alpine songs that my father, a multi-decorated Alpine, had taught me. He saw his Alpine hat in my studio, and I told him about the war songs that my father Mario had taught me as a child. Hirshhorn asked me to sing some for him, and he tried to join me singing along. Before leaving, he asked if I would be willing to donate one of my major sculptures, "The Wave".

"The Wave" is reproduced on the cover of my book published in 1985: "The Work of Carla Lavatelli, by Carla Lavatelli, 1970 - 1984". Several copies of this book were purchased by the Smithsonian in Washington as “a relevant addition to the Museum”. This book also won a very prestigious award at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, being included in the exhibition of the best Art books of the last 15 years: "La Quinzaine du Livre d’Art".

In those years, I was completely against making donations, as they usually end up in the basement.

But when Joseph Hirshhorn told me about his multimillion-dollars purchases in Paris, I felt that he could at least pay for the costs of the materials and for my two-and-a-half years of work to produce this sculpture.

When I went to my studio in New York, Joseph Hirshhorn, invited me together with Alva Gimbel, a major collector of my work, to visit his collection and his home in Greenwich, Connecticut . He lived near Alva, who had in her bow window one of my bronze sculptures "Swirling Seagulls". She had acquired it at my first solo exhibition in New York.

Again Joseph brought up the subject of my donating a sculpture and gave me one of his brochures with his autograph: “to Carla - much love, Joseph Hirshhorn, Greenwich October 1970” – see enclosure -. Unfortunately, I did not have a camera and did not think of photographing our encounter, as one would do today.

We met again on several art-related occasions and I remember vividly being invited to the Whitney Museum for the inauguration of Calder’s exhibit. Calder had married a very wealthy woman, one day I remember his wife telling me : “ I never thought that we could sell this stuff “

Unfortunately, while we were happily dancing at the wonderful party, the death of Calder was announced.