Renate Druks (2 January 1921 – 15 December 2007) was an American painter and filmmaker. She worked in Los Angeles, where she also practiced Thelema, the occult religious movement established by Aleister Crowley.[1] She acted as a muse to other artists including Anaïs Nin, Marjorie Cameron and Kenneth Anger.[2]
Druks was born in Vienna on 2 January 1921 into a Jewish family and went on to study at the Vienna Art Academy for Women.[2] In 1938, she and her American husband fled Austria for the United States with their son, Peter.[2][3][4] She studied further at the Art Students League, spent several years in Mexico, and eventually settled in Los Angeles.[2][3] She threw lavish parties at her Malibu home, one of which becamse the inspiration for Anger's 1954 film, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.[4]
Druks painted in a surrealist style and was inspired by paganism, tarot, and the occult.[2][4] Her subjects were typically women and cats, and her style has been compared to Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini.[4] Her painting found little commercial success during her lifetime, but in July 2021, fourteen years after her death and more than fifty years since her last solo exhibit, a collection of her paintings was exhibited at Max Levai's Ranch gallery in Montauk, New York.[4]
She was a close friend of Anaïs Nin and, in 1979, illustrated and published Nin's memoir of their friendship, Portrait in Three Dimensions.[5] Nin's 1964 novel, Collages, was also inspired by Druks and the two collaborated on a screenplay adapted from the work.[3][6]
Druks was also a filmmaker. In 1967 she made a 12 minute documentary about her painting process, titled A Painters Journal.[7] In 1973 her short film Space Boy was nominated for a Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.[8] Space Boy was intended as a sequel to her friend Curtis Harrington's 1966 science-fiction horror film, Queen of Blood.[9]
- ^ Cagle, R. L. (28 May 2019). Scorpio Rising: A Queer Film Classic. Arsenal Pulp Press. p. 46. ISBN 978-1-55152-762-8.
- ^ a b c d e White, Katie (5 May 2022). "Surrealist Renate Druks, Visionary Painter of Cats and Muse to Anaïs Nin, Gets a Welcome Spotlight at the Independent Art Fair". Artnet News. Retrieved 31 July 2023.
- ^ a b c "Renate Druks". maxlevai.com. Retrieved 31 July 2023.
- ^ a b c d e Haigney, Sophie (29 July 2021). "At The Ranch in Montauk, Plenty of Room for Art and Horses". The New York Times.
- ^ Unger, Leonard; Litz, A. Walton; Weigel, Molly; Parini, Jay; Bechler, Lea (1974). American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies. Scribner. p. 198. ISBN 978-0-684-80649-5.
- ^ Olenick, Mike (November 13, 2010). "The Inauguration of Renate Druks". Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles, 1945-1980.
- ^ "Finding Aid for the Renate Druks Collection of Material by and Relating to Anaïs Nin, 1953-1977". Online Archive of California. Retrieved 31 July 2023.
- ^ Champlin, Charles (14 May 1973). "'Godspell' kicks off Cannes festival". The Los Angeles Times. p. 41. Retrieved 23 April 2023 – via newspapers.com.
- ^ "Other Cinema: Archive Fever". Artists' Television Access. 8 December 2019. Retrieved 23 April 2023.