TONY CURTIS

Tony Curtis began exploring art as a child when given tailor’s chalk by his father.  He drew on the sidewalk outside of his father’s tailor shop, and that grew into a passion for painting long before he started acting. 

As a modern-art-era painter, Curtis was not only attracted to the art of his time, but was in fact critiqued by numerous artists that practiced it —this influence can be seen in his work.  He studied under the renowned (and often controversial) modern artist, Balthasar Klossowski de Rola, best known as “Balthus”.

Curtis lived a richly celebrated and very public life — he earned a commemoration from the U.S. Navy and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; he dated Marilyn Monroe and married Janet Leigh; he was knighted in both France and Hungary, his face appears on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover;  he frequented the White House as a guest during the John F. Kennedy Administration; Elvis Presley went on record to credit him with influencing his famous rolling coif hairdo, and he acted in over one hundred forty films.   What is telling, however, is that according to Tony Curtis himself, his crowning achievement came in 2005, when one of his original paintings, “Red Table,” was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.