Dimitri Hadzi interviews, 1981 Jan. 2 - 1990 Mar. 9

This transcript is in the public domain and may be used without permission. Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Dimitri Hadzi interviews, 1981 Jan. 2 - 1990 Mar. 9, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview with Dimitri Hadzi
Conducted by interviewee
In Cambridge, Massachussettes
January 2, 1981

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Dimitri Hadzi on January 2, 1981. The interview took place in Cambridge, MA and was conducted by Robert Brown for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview

2 January 1981

(Transcription from cassette recording. Sides one and two of eight.)

DIMITRI HADZI: Happy New Year.

ROBERT BROWN: Why don't we just start talking about (how) you were born in New York City in 1921...

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, I was born actually in Greenwich Village and it was very nice for me to go back to that area to go to school at Cooper Union. So I was born on the first day of Spring in 1921 of Greek parents. And after a number of years moved to Brooklyn where I spent most of my young years.

ROBERT BROWN: And were your parents, had they been over here long?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, I think they must have come over, (I) never got that very straight. I suppose during the Balkan Wars. My father was from Kastoria(?) in Macedonia which, incidentally, Lucas Samarras is from also. And my mother was actually born in European Turkey of Greek family and her father was a grain merchant. She actually spent very little time in Greece. And I suspect, I think it was the Balkan War which brought them over.

ROBERT BROWN: And (was your) Dad the same? Did he come from, did he leave Macedonia, or did he grow up there?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, he grew up there. I guess he came to the, he must have been in his early twenties when he came here and so he often spoke of his youth in Macedonia, riding horses and hunting. And he was a furrier, the way most Kastorians are...

ROBERT BROWN: Do you mean that's a traditional profession among them?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes, they still are. And they are unique in that they work from scraps, fur scraps. And they stitch them all together and they make rather remarkable pelts in that you can't see they're made from scraps. Now they're sending scraps from all over the world -- from Germany and Sweden. It's a very active and it's quite an affluent city right now.

ROBERT BROWN: Do you remember some of that business? When you were a boy?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh I tried to, sure, because during the depression my father kept a shop. I tried to work there a few times, my brothers were more successful, they spent more time working there and I wasn't very good with a sewing machine. It's just as well (laughs).

ROBERT BROWN: But you had brothers and sisters?

DIMITRI HADZI: Two brothers and two sisters, yes.

ROBERT BROWN: So it was a pretty big family.

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes, five in all.

ROBERT BROWN: Were you one of the older?

DIMITRI HADZI: I was the second. My sister was interested in theatre and she did some work in Greek theatre in New York and they did some travelling around America. But I guess that career didn't last too long.

ROBERT BROWN: What were your interests as a little fella?

DIMITRI HADZI: I always drew, and I was encouraged by my uncle who was a machinist and it was my first experience spending time in a shop. One uncle was a machinist and the other uncle was a candymaker. But my machinist uncle was a very inspiring man to me. He used to take me to the Metropolitan Museum and he was a Sunday painter. He used to belong to some artists' societies and he exhibited at (sort of you know) amateur exhibitions. But he had me copying postcards and things like that. It was my first introduction to oils. But what happened was that I went into Chemistry. And how that happened was that I was going to junior high school in Brooklyn. Do you want all these details?

ROBERT BROWN: Oh, yes.

DIMITRI HADZI: And I guess that, in that area in Brooklyn...it was during the Depression and none of us had any idea of going to college. Actually, very few of us even graduated from high school. I guess we never took the academic world too seriously. We just wanted to get finished, get your working papers when you were sixteen and get a job. And that was the basic mentality. But I was very eager and I was very curious. I used to do alot of reading and drawing and building model airplanes and ships. I used to stay up 'till two or three. My mother was very sympathetic in that case because she'd stay up with me until two or three in the morning with a kerosene lamp because we didn't have electricity. We couldn't afford it. I was at Dewey Jr. High School in Brooklyn. I was called into the office one day...by this vocational guidance woman, Mrs. Anderson, I'll never forget her. She asked me what my plans were, because I was getting close to graduation. And I said, well, I'll just probably go to manual training school where all my friends (go) and get the working papers. And she said, "well you have very good grades in math and physics and science. Have you ever considered going to Brooklyn Tech?" That was Brooklyn Technical High School. Well, that was, to me, a stunning blow because Brooklyn Technical High School was like the Acropolis in New York. I used to watch kids with Brooklyn Tech on the back of their shirts and say...You envied them because it was a kind of...untouchable kind of a place. And to even be considered for that was a staggering experience.

So, anyway, I went and took the exams and to my astonishment, I passed. So I was able to go to Brooklyn Tech. And they told me that I would need a drafting set when I started for my first year. So I told Mrs. Anderson, "My family doesn't have any money. How can I possibly get the drafting set?" And she said, she thought for a while and said, "I understand you shine shoes after class." I used to keep a shine box in class and at three o'clock I'd go around and shine about four teachers', about four or five teachers' shoes. And that way, I'd earn some extra money. Of course I used to shine shoes from age nine. And she said, "why don't you come every Saturday morning,"-- this was during the summer -- "...and shine the family's shoes?" She lived in an enormous house in Bay Ridge. And I don't know how many members of the family (there were), but there were at least fifteen to twenty pairs of shoes down in the basement. And I'd shine them and she'd bring me coffee...er, milk and pie in the midst of this. And at the end of the summer I'd raised enough money to buy the drafting set. And I still have it here (laughs) Yes. A German set. So I went to...

ROBERT BROWN: You were pretty pleased that you were going...

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh I was terribly, I was very excited. Yes.

ROBERT BROWN: Was your family very pleased, too?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. They were quite excited because they realized that it was a tough school.

ROBERT BROWN: What about the pressure to go to work, though?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, that was the understanding. I had to make a deal with my family. The only way that I could go to Brooklyn Tech was if I were,...of course because everyone had to contribute money to the family. The only way I could go there would be to get a part time job. So I got one, from Friday evening, in a fruit and vegetable shop, and all day Saturday. This was like sixteen to eighteen hours on a Saturday. And that involved...(working) mostly as a delivery boy, but also helping in the shop, waiting when the pressure was high. All sorts of odds and ends jobs. These were...I was working for some Greeks. And they were tough, tough customers. They would really demand alot. But it was good, you know it's, I think, the abuse I went through, I think most of the kids today would quit. But that's part of the training, if you notice, that even in Italy, in the foundries and what not, there's a certain apprenticeship which the young kids have to go through. It's like hazing in a way and there's a certain point when you mature, when you rebel and you're respected.

ROBERT BROWN: Did they make sure that you did alot of the dirty work?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. I had to do everything. Bringing in the bags of potatoes, moving the trucks, sweeping, and of course, in that neighborhood, in South Brooklyn, which is getting quite popular now and getting reactivated, the streets are very hilly going up to Prospect Park and the delivery...I had a delivery truck, do you know? I don't know what you call them...

ROBERT BROWN: Hand trucks or push carts?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes, push carts, with two big wheels and a small one. And that used to get loaded to the point where I couldn't even see above it. And I had to push that uphill usually up to Ninth Avenue. That was pretty exhausting. I earned some money on tips that way. But it was very physical. I think the thing that used to almost kill me was that, around ten o'clock at night I'd have to make the deliveries to a chinese restaurant and they involved carrying two one-hundred-pound bags of potatoes up one flight of steps and that was just almost killing. (laughs) And one way in which I used to relax from this was that they'd have midnight shows at the local movie house. Everybody would go with their girls and what not, I'd just go there to flop out until two or three in the morning. (laughs) But also that job pulled us through the Depression, because, besides earning that money I would also bring home two to three big baskets...remember those wonderful wooden baskets full of fruit and vegetables which were going bad, but certainly good enough for just...to clean off, so...

ROBERT BROWN: To eat right away.

DIMITRI HADZI: Well to cook into sauces and things like that. So I used to, every week there were two to three of those baskets of fruits and vegetables and that helped keep the family going.

ROBERT BROWN: Was your family mainly within a Greek community?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, no, it wasn't a Greek...Well we were near a Greek church and there was, there were Greeks around, but it wasn't like, say, Chicago -- you know the great type Greek neighborhood. There were Greeks sort of scattered around, mostly around the church, too. But it was nothing like what I've seen in, or say in Manhattan, New York, on Eighth Avenue in the twenties -- a very compact Greek area with Greek shops and all that. We didn't have that. It was mostly mixed: Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish. Very mixed.

ROBERT BROWN: And your family itself, was it blended in with various different groups to some extent?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. Yes, we had Russian, Polish friends, some Greeks. I guess fewer Greeks because my mother came from Anatolia. They used to call us the Turks so they really had a little harrassment there.

ROBERT BROWN: There was some feeling...

DIMITRI HADZI: (laughs) Yes. Even then!

ROBERT BROWN: Even though the Anatolians had been persecuted by the Greeks.

DIMITRI HADZI: Exactly. Yes. It's just a...

ROBERT BROWN: It's a real provincial rivalry.

DIMITRI HADZI: Real provincial, yes. So anyway, I went to Brooklyn Technical High School... I did quite well in the first couple of years. And then the family problems were getting more and more complicated and difficult. But I graduated.

ROBERT BROWN: And you specialized in Chemistry?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. What happened was that the first year everyone took the regular course and then you elected what direction you were going to go into. They also had an art course there and they were trying to put me into that. It's more like commercial art, which was quite different from...I don't know how they explained themselves with that -- at Brooklyn Technical High School. But somehow or other, a friend of mine that first year gave me his chemistry set, which he hated -- chemistry -- and his family gave him as a Christmas present this wonderful Gilbert (?) chemistry set and I just loved it and couldn't stop playing around with it. And that hooked me into Chemistry. So I dropped art, but everyone had to draw anyway. They had... The good thing about that school was that they had free hand drawing and drafting. And that's where I became convinced that anyone with training can draw.

ROBERT BROWN: You felt that then, you saw that many people...

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh people that couldn't draw anything. And they would set up machine parts, telephones and stuff like that and then by the time the fourth year came around all the students could draw. So I became convinced of that. Conceptual drawing is something else, of course, but making renderings I think anyone can learn that. So I graduated in Chemistry. And from there I went to, I got a job with InterChemical Corporation in the research labs in Manhattan on Forty-fifth Street and I worked there for three years.

ROBERT BROWN: What did you do there? You didn't have an advance degree but...

DIMITRI HADZI: No. What happened was because of the training at Brooklyn Tech. Because we worked with college manuals and handbooks...and we were trained in qualitative, quantitative analysis and industrial chemistry. So we could take on a lab job. And of course the industry loved us because we... they wouldn't have to hire someone with a degree...Now they would get people from Columbia or Fordham for $25/week at that time, and they would get us for $15. So they'd save $10/week on us. Which was alot of money in those days.

ROBERT BROWN: Yes.

DIMITRI HADZI: And as most of the young people in the labs, we were all going to Brooklyn Polytech at night for our degree. The minimum was eight years at night for a bachelor's.

ROBERT BROWN: Not to the High School anymore?

DIMITRI HADZI: No. The High School is Brooklyn Technical High School. And the other was Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.

ROBERT BROWN: And you began going there, too.

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. I went there for about three years. And that was tough because you work all day and then you go there four nights a week and then on weekends you work in the labs, you know, the school labs. That was pretty rugged because I'd get home after working and going to school and then I'd start doing homework until two or three in the morning.

ROBERT BROWN: And then back to work. What were your work hours like? Eight-thirty?

DIMITRI HADZI: They were nine-to-five, and then, usually, at lunchtime, you would do your homework.

ROBERT BROWN: Was there anything in that work at InterChemical that related at all to art?

DIMITRI HADZI: Very little in the sense, no.

ROBERT BROWN: Did you do any drawing or graphic work?

DIMITRI HADZI: No. Nothing, no. Just pigments. I got familiar with pigments and solvents and stuff like that which came in handy later on when I was grinding my colors. But, aside from that there was very little. I was more interested in music at that time. And one of my colleagues there...We used to bring in classical records during lunchtime and play them. The two of us would have lunch. We would bring in sandwiches and play the records. And little by little more and more of these people, the lab people would come and sit and join us. And it got so big we had to move to the stockroom where there was more space. And we had to create a program so it was the H & G music foundation -- Hadzi and Greening. And we would bring not only records from our home but we would go to the Brooklyn Public Library or (the) Library in New York and bring records. And we would post a weekly program. I mean, we would get thirty to forty people coming to that. But then, the war came and I had to leave.

ROBERT BROWN: Were you interested in playing or just interested in listening?

DIMITRI HADZI: Listening. I was a listener. Yes. So how it started was that my friend, Ed Greening, and I would listen to Wagner records and or whatever opera and then we'd go to the Opera. See, we would get seats to the Opera and then a week or so before that we'd listen to records and get familiar with the opera. But as far as any drawing or painting, I wasn't... I'd go to the museum occasionally...but, I was looking at some grades the other day. I found my report cards at the public school there and I was getting grades like, this is astonishing. In art, like 60 and 55 and 65! (laughs)

ROBERT BROWN: Whereas your grades in science were very good.

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. I had 90's and 85's and 99's. They were all very (laughs) Well, it's mostly that, they weren't teaching... It's funny because in high school I didn't do too much. But in public school, I was singled out of the class to be the artist. And I would do, for the hallways, big posters. Color things of...battles, of some famous Revolutionary battles. There was George Washington crossing the Delaware and Burgoyne (?) and all these people. And I would be the one to paint these big murals for the hallways and be excused from the classes because I was the artist.

ROBERT BROWN: But on the other hand, in the art class, you didn't do too well?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, this was in the junior high school. And it was drawing, making patterns. And I would find it quite boring. Only once did the teacher get inspired. Because I used to go to the Metropolitan Museum and draw the plaster casts. And she said, "look, look at Hadzi. He's so good. Why don't you do it?"

ROBERT BROWN: But the basic teaching was arduous and pretty dull?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. In junior high.

ROBERT BROWN: Copy work?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. It was patterns. It was more design, not even what they call design now.

ROBERT BROWN: And at the Technical High School it was rendering mainly?

DIMITRI HADZI: It was rendering, yes. And drafting. So I was a very good draftsman and I used to do projects for the teacher in the back room. His own projects. So I was very good. He was ready to have me...he was going to send me to some school just to major in drafting. He thought that I was that good at it.

ROBERT BROWN: At the college level did you have drafting, too?

DIMITRI HADZI: No. That was strictly chemistry, yes. Physics and math.

ROBERT BROWN: Well, you continued at InterChemical and going to night school until, when? 1943 or so?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, the war came, when? December 7, 19...?

ROBERT BROWN: '41.

DIMITRI HADZI: 1941. I enlisted July 4, 1942 for the Air Forces. This was funny because I enlisted in the Air Forces Pilot Training. And all my friends laughed at me. They said, "what are you, crazy? Why don't you wait to get drafted?" I said, "Well, I want to fly. This is my opportunity." And they laughed. But as soon as I got in I took the exam and passed. I immediately got a letter saying that because all the airfields are tied up we'll put you on a waiting list. And I waited six months before they called me into active service. In that six months I went to all the farewell parties where all the guys were laughing at me. (laughs)

ROBERT BROWN: So you continued working down to the last minute?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes.

ROBERT BROWN: And you were still living at home with your family?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. I was living in Brooklyn. Right. And then, of course, that's where the next phase of it, my art career starts -- when I washed out of pilot training and navigation training and all that.

ROBERT BROWN: But you did get, I read that you got stationed in the South Pacific and you had some time to do drawing.

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. What happened was that I went to Salt Lake City for overseas... final training and went to the west coast. San Francisco and I was ready to be shipped out and we had one day off or two days off and it suddenly occurred to me that ...I knew that I wouldn't be able to use my camera probably a great deal. So I thought, why don't I get some sketch pads and start drawing? I hadn't done this in years, now. So I went out and I bought pads and pencils, colored pencils and what not. And I took them back. And we were on the ship for over thirty days without escort. So I had plenty of time on the ship and I started drawing. I should show you these drawings next time. They should be recorded anyway for the Archive. And I did the guys lounging around, relaxed, and the gunners. Now that I look back at it, they're quite good drawings -- considering that there was a long span of time that I haven't drawn, since as a kid. And one of my officers...By this time I had washed out of pilot training. So I became an enlisted man, a private.

ROBERT BROWN: They'd decided you weren't pilot material?

DIMITRI HADZI: I washed out after nine hours. I had a terrible instructor who hated New Yorkers. I mean, I can only learn when I'm relaxed and this guy really made it nerve-wracking. My knees were black and blue from getting banged by the control stick. Every time I made a wrong maneuver he'd bang my knees with a stick. So...Then I went up to Navigation, of course. Navigation I got within ten days of my commission and I fouled up badly with my admission. So they (laughs) washed me out. Well, fortunately, it was lucky for me because if we weren't losing navigators, at that particular time, they would have put me back one class -- three weeks and I would have made it with no problem, you know. I was quite good. But we weren't losing navigators at that time so they deliberated over it, the WASH (?) Board, they called it, deliberated a long time over my case because they knew I was very interested in navigation. But they just weren't, you know, they had an ample supply of navigators. So I washed out. But they said, well, of course your grades are still high in bombadiering. So I said, "I've had enough of the Cadettes!" After a year or so in the Cadettes, I became a radio man, an enlisted man.

ROBERT BROWN: So that's what you were doing when you were on board?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. So I went to the islands as a radio man. So anyway. One of my officers noticed me drawing all the time and he got really interested and he said, "gee, well you should do some watercolors." And I said, "well, I don't have any watercolors." So he took me up to his cabin and he opened up his footlocker. He was a biologist so he had his microscope and watercolors for making drawings of various bacteria, etc., etc. So he lent me his watercolors and he also gave me permission to be up on the officers' deck so I could draw down. They were separated then. I suppose they still are. And then we arrived in New Guinea and it was a rather remarkable thing for the Air Forces... They would interview each man and, really, to find out if they were really interested in doing what they were doing. What they wanted to do. Like if you said, "well, I really hate being a radio mechanic," they'd take you out of it. After all that training!

ROBERT BROWN: And put you into something else?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. Whatever (laughs)

ROBERT BROWN: It seems a little late to do the interviewing.

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, I know. Maybe it was not quite that way, but you were interviewed, and it was for spotting what kind of activity...If you were adventurous, why they'd probably send you way up to the front lines or something like that. Anyway, then, I'll never forget. This Major Green, when my turn came, he said, "Oh, you're Hadzi." He said, "Lieutenant ------..." (I should, I forgot his name at the moment) "showed me the work you did." He wanted to show Major Green. And he said, "That's very impressive, what you're doing. I think you should continue with this drawing. We can fix you up here in Halandia. The promotion would be good and all you'd have to do is paint an occasional sign or do some illustrating for the local paper and it's a good way to finish the war." But I was interested in ultra-high frequencies and radio and had a big duffel bag full of books on electronics. And I said, "gee, that's fine but I'm really interested in (electronics)..." Boy, he was just staggered (laughs) This guy was really setting me up for something, you know!

ROBERT BROWN: Yes. A real soft spot! (laughs)

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. He said, "well, I paint a little myself, but you should...I'll tell you what, but you've got to promise me that you're going to keep drawing. I'll send you to a place where you're going to have lots of time to do your radio work and everything." So the next scene is this Catalina Flying Boat circling this rock (laughs) in the Timor Sea. One tree on it! So there were exactly twenty men on that island. Eight square miles. Champagny Island in northwest Australia in the Timor Sea.

ROBERT BROWN: Champagny.

DIMITRI HADZI: So that was quite an exciting...(laughs)

ROBERT BROWN: What was your job, to keep the radio going?

DIMITRI HADZI: I was there as a radio mechanic. But they already had radio mechanics there. So I did all kinds of jobs. They found out I was trained in chemistry, so they put me in charge of the water distillation unit. So we had to pump sea water to make fresh water. And you know, with twenty guys on the island, you really had to do lots of things to keep yourself busy. I did all kinds of things... Among them I started drawing, for one thing, and painting. I also would figure out...They have enormous tidal drops in Australia. In Darwin, I think it's forty to sixty feet -- something like that -- and we had big drops, where, once the tide went out, you could walk out like two to three miles. There were enormous tidal pools. And so that was a problem, for when the water would come up to the end of your pipe so you could suck it up into the distillation unit. So I worked out charts so I'd know exactly what time the water would reach and I could hop in the Jeep so I could get down there and start the engines, you see. So there were things like that. And I also used to make drawings of the constellations and watch meteoric showers. Keep track of those (laughs). There were all kinds of things like that to keep you busy. And then, because we were on sort of isolation duty, we had special privileges. Like extra cigarettes and liquor and the books. We used to have these paperbacks during the war.

ROBERT BROWN: What do you mean? Just popular -- mysteries? And...

DIMITRI HADZI: No. It was...Well, not quite comic books. No, there was heavy weight stuff, too. Like Thomas Mann, etc., etc. There was a big range. So while in the midst of this drawing and fantasizing, I read Lust for Life (by) Irving Stone. The whole setup there, being on this island, the fantasy department working overtime...

ROBERT BROWN: (laughs)

DIMITRI HADZI: I really got quite fascinated and I decided that, gee, I've got to go see some museums when I get back and... And it was there that I met Phil Wexler from the Bronx, who was on one of the other adjoining islands there in this chain with their long range navigation -- Lorenz stations. And we ended up in Sai Pan together. And we decided that, instead of getting our Army discharge on the East coast, where everyone was flown right home, we would get it on the West coast and from the West coast, we would hitchhike across the country and stop at all the museums. For after all it's easy to travel now, but to get across the country in those days was a big, costly operation. So we thought, what the heck, we're going to be on the West coast. Why don't we take advantage of that geographical position and just work East by hitchhiking? So it took us three months and seventy-five rides (laughs). And we stopped all the way. We went to the, all the great museums -- Toledo and the Cleveland Museum, and the Chicago Art Institute.

ROBERT BROWN: Were people willing to give you rides pretty well?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. With the uniforms, yes, it was no problem. Oh there was once, we got stuck outside Reno, I think it was. We got out in the desert and the guy let us off there by just turning in. And we had to hitch back into town because no one would...

ROBERT BROWN: To keep stopping rides.

DIMITRI HADZI: No. It was cold.

ROBERT BROWN: Nothing else happened with your Air Force experience? This was before you got back from that isolation duty.

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. Well I did alot of drawing there and thinking.

ROBERT BROWN: Were you able to bring back the drawings?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh I have the drawings. Yes. Well, I was still interested in Chemistry. So, when I got back to New York, and hell, my mother was really upset. Because everyone had just flown right back home to see their mamas, you know. And we just took our time. (laughs)

ROBERT BROWN: Did you write her postcards?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes, occasionally. I would send her a postcard here from Wyoming and you know...

ROBERT BROWN: You said that you went to the Art Institute of Chicago and saw the Lachaise?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, yes, the Lachaise, oh just knocked me out. (It was) right on top of the steps there. And just recently, a few months ago I was back there and I saw it again, so it's a very meaningful piece for me -- that great Lachaise.

ROBERT BROWN: What do you suppose it was about that. At that time?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, aside from being a sensual sculpture, it was, that's what art's about -- a certain sense of mystery which you really can't explain. What puts this whole thing together, you know. But there was... the thing that I remember was the proportions and this buoyant quality of this relatively huge woman just floating. It's just an amazing sculpture, I thought. And I still feel the same way about it. It's just a remarkable thing.

ROBERT BROWN: Did this possibly get you interested in doing some sculpture?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, I'm sure it did, I'm sure it did, although not...

ROBERT BROWN: It didn't emerge just then?

DIMITRI HADZI: Not then, no. And I got back to New York and I went back to the laboratories where our jobs were promised and fortunately, they were redoing the labs. And so they said, "well you've been gone three and a half years. Why don't you take off a few more months and come back when you're ready?" (laughs)

ROBERT BROWN: Did you have any money to go on?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, I was, I guess maybe I could have got (by) on Substitute 20, where after two weeks you could collect $20/month or something. I forget what it was, but I wasn't worried about the money. Then I was getting interested...After the trip across the country I really started getting interested in museums and galleries and I started going. And I saw an ad in the New York Times of art classes at the YMHA (Young Men's Hebrew Association) on Ninety-second Street and Lexington (Avenue), which is famous for its chamber music and poetry readings and I knew nothing about this place, but it didn't take me long to realize what a marvelous place it was. And I decided I could, I signed up for one night a week. That was all that I could afford. And Aaron Berkman was the painter who taught there and he was very encouraging. Berkman, Aaron Berkman.

ROBERT BROWN: And he was a good teacher, wasn't he?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. He was great. He just encouraged me. He said, "gee, you should come in every night." And I said, "I can't afford it." And he said,"That's o.k."

END OF SIDE ONE.

BEGIN SIDE TWO OF EIGHT.

DIMITRI HADZI: And I was making such progress, he said, he told me, "you should start working with color." And I told him that I had no money for paints. So he went and opened the closet and there were all these huge, unfinished canvases and half-dried tubes of paint. And he said, "just help yourself." So I started painting and I was really excited. Of course he was very, he was just thrilled with my progress, obviously. It was good for the class, too, see. And it was there I met these friends and this gal who I went with for quite a while. We used to go for coffee after class and one night they said that they were going down to Cooper Union to take the entrance exams. Of course, Cooper Union was an Art... free school. Art and engineering and architecture. So I went with them, just for kicks, you know. Because I knew I was going back to chemistry, I had a job waiting for me so I thought, why not? I guess I was curious to find out if I was good and I passed and they didn't. And that was a real blow to everybody. (laughs)

ROBERT BROWN: That hurt some of the friendships?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. That really did alot of rupturing there.

ROBERT BROWN: So, Berkman had encouraged you?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. He was absolutely delighted of course, because he'd really helped me, see.

ROBERT BROWN: What kind of exam would they have had, by the way, the entry exam?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, it was in two parts. And if you could pass the first part, they'd send you a card. Well, after the first part, I was sure I didn't pass, so when I got this card saying bring a pound of plasticene for the second part, I was ecstatic. And after I took that second part I was just ready to give up. And when I got this, "Congratulations, you..." and I realized that ninety out of a thousand made it...so that's pretty good odds. With my gambling instinct, I didn't go back to the laboratory. That was the end of the lab. The end of chemistry.

The exam was a very interesting one, because, I think...I don't know what they do now. But the first part has a general intelligence kind of thing, you know -- vocabulary...But then, they have spatial problems, blocks and how many, they show you one view of it with two sides and you're supposed to figure out how many (there are). And then, I thought, simple, extremely simple-minded things like they have on a page two railroad trains and you're supposed to draw around each one to show one in a valley and one on a mountaintop. I thought it was very simple -- they looked very simple, these things to me. And then you're supposed to draw a scene from a movie. Your favorite movie. But in any style you want to. So I did that Henry V, the guy shooting with bows and arrows, with big, massive arrows...and then we were supposed to design a house for three people and then you were supposed to do a portrait out of plasticene. That was in the second part. But where I was getting discouraged was, why I thought I failed both parts was that I was watching these kids. Most of them were from Music and Arts High School and they...We all took this test in a great auditorium and we were all separated so you could watch these kids with great facility knocking out these drawings or playing with that plasticene and (I thought), "Oh my God!" (laughs) Well, so I was all the more excited when I passed and some of the other people failed. So it must be a good system because they have a very high rate of success with these people who have gone there.

ROBERT BROWN: Yes. And they were able to winnow through the very facile ones to find those that...

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. That's really, that's, yes. They could see right through that.

ROBERT BROWN: It was your point earlier that anybody can learn to render, essentially that's what those students were doing.

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. They were very...yes. So I think they were looking for something more and I think they could tell more, maybe in the house we had to design or the scene from the movie and other tests, you know. And also how we handled the plasticene -- I suppose if you had a real plastic sense.

ROBERT BROWN: About when did you start at Cooper Union?

DIMITRI HADZI: I was twenty-five and that was '46, 1946. And I got out in 1950 (telephone interruption).

ROBERT BROWN: So you started, was that in September or so when you started?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. September 1946 night school.

ROBERT BROWN: Night school? Because you were going to work during the day?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. I couldn't see kind of just being a student during the day. I had to earn money, for one thing. But, however, by going to night school and going to Cooper Union, I saved my G.I. Bill (benefits) which plays a big role in my European trip.

ROBERT BROWN: You could use it later?

DIMITRI HADZI: Exactly, right. So I used part of it, very little, at Cooper Union. And some at the Brooklyn Museum. But I had a least three years coming when I went to Europe. (Which) made it possible to survive there.

ROBERT BROWN: Did you get a job during the day that was...(?) not too arduous?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. I started out. I'm trying to remember which was the first job. I was working in commercial art, as an artist's model, a bus boy and a waiter. Those were my jobs (laughs). I met, in the Army, in the Air Force, in Texas, I met a fellow G.I. who was an artist and little did I know that eventually this man would be hiring me! (laughs) And I forget the circumstances, but I met him in New York and he was all excited that I remembered him, and that I was going into art and I was looking for a job. And he and his brother, Stringbands were just starting a little agency, advertising...

ROBERT BROWN: Stringbands?

DIMITRI HADZI: Stringbands, yes. And they, they hired me. So I worked for $20/week, very little because they were just starting out...

ROBERT BROWN: That work was reasonably compatible, then, with your artwork. I mean with your training at night. It wasn't an utter contrast.

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh it was compatible. I was getting an insight into how, in those days they were called commercial artists. Now we call them commercial designers, and I was enjoying it. I was getting quite good at it. Although I, there were alot of things I didn't like about it. Like answering the phone and constant lying, like, "oh, yes, it's on its way!" and you know! (laughs) That was the business. Anyway, I forget how long that job lasted -- close to a year I think. But they had to let me go because they couldn't support me. And they were very upset and sorry because we were very friendly. We worked (together) very well. And they said, "Dimitri, this may be the best thing that could happen to you because you're really a good artist and maybe you should think of seriously being an easel painter, or whatever." So I became an artist's model after that, working at the Brooklyn Museum, posing for housewives and what not.

ROBERT BROWN: Was that easy enough, or just very boring?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, it was boring and it was interesting. I make every job interesting. When I was posing at the Brooklyn Museum, I would, on all the easels around me, I would tack up photographs of sculpture. So, as I was rotated, as I was being rotated I would be studying the sculpture. (laughs) Taking advantage of my time! And that was very eratic, also that, being a model, because you couldn't always get a job. And then I became a bus boy because I knew the one thing about working in a restaurant was that you had your food taken care of. I became a bus boy at the Broad Street Club at Wall Street and Broad. A businessmen's luncheon club, and eventually I worked up to a waiter. But then it was time to graduate and the woman I was living with at the time was also an artist -- also at the Brooklyn Museum. She was an excellent cook and I was a good waiter and someone approached us to take over a concession at Woodstock, the famous Woodstock -- which was an artists' colony in those days. I guess it still is. And so we, I quit my job at the Broad Street Club and put all my energy into planning for the summer, for, so we had a ...She was a veteran also, so we cashed our bonds, and whatever we had and bought equipment and spent the summer up in Woodstock, which turned out to be a complete disaster (laughs) !

ROBERT BROWN: What do you mean, in terms of business, or in every way?

DIMITRI HADZI: Financially, yes. We didn't have a, we weren't told that's it's important to have a liquor license. So after a couple of dinners we had to fall back on breakfasts and lunches. But it was wonderful being up there and I was lucky to get the, that was when I found out I got the Fulbright to Greece, so I knew that I was leaving.

ROBERT BROWN: So that was it?

DIMITRI HADZI: That was it, yes.

ROBERT BROWN: Could we go back to some of your teachers or fellow students at Cooper Union?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes, at Cooper Union.

ROBERT BROWN: Was it a structured program that you were into?

DIMITRI HADZI: Very structured, yes.

ROBERT BROWN: Were you starting at a beginning level?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes, oh yes. There were no electives. The only thing you could elect was what you were going into -- Fine Arts or Commercial Art or Architecture. And I think in the first year we had the same courses.

ROBERT BROWN: Who would teach that? Was there a rotation of teachers?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. I think it was broken up into several classes that first year, anyway. So there would be, say, different sculptors teaching different classes. My first year and probably, at Cooper Union, I had some of my greatest teachers, who were George Kratina, who's still alive I think, Nick Marcicano, who's also around, a painter. Morris Kantor, who's dead now, and Bob Gwalthmey, whose son is now quite famous as an architect. And my first year with George Kratina, he was probably the most exciting teacher I've had because he, he made everyone feel that they were really doing great things (laughs) !

ROBERT BROWN: What were you studying with him?

DIMITRI HADZI: Sculpture. But he was my inspiration. For now the one thing that seems so important is to encourage the students. Even if they're bad, to really encourage them and make them feel that they're doing something because it's contagious. After a while they really start thinking they are and it really works. It was really astonishing to see what these students turned out in that class. And that's where my interest in architectural sculpture started. Because one of the problems that he gave us was to do a façade for the U.N. building which was going up at that time. And I just have it right here, I'll show it to you later. (I) just recovered it from Brooklyn. I have a waste mould over there -- I'll show it to you later. And I look at it now and I'm quite impressed with what I did because I didn't know anything about modern art or sculpture, but it was pretty good (laughs), I thought. I also did a, this man encouraged such freedom and really triggered off your imagination. I'd never heard of kinetic sculpture. And I did this wire thing with plaster on top which, you could just touch it and it would start oscillating in one direction or two directions and...I have to try to find a photograph. I think that there's a photograph somewhere. But that's all destroyed now.

ROBERT BROWN: He encouraged you, then? He encouraged everybody, but how did he evaluate? Did he differentiate between, among those that weren't very competent and those that...?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, I'll tell you a very funny thing about this class that was almost...particularly with the last projects...were so (that) everyone was really working and their own personalities were really coming out. They were very individual projects. And I can't honestly say that this one was really bad and that one was lousy and that was brilliant. They were all on a very high level. And the scales were unbelievable. Of course there were some women who were doing big phallic things without knowing they were doing something phallic (laughs). It was enormously impressive what the students did in their first year. We all had common problems at first. We all had to do little figures, let's say, and then make a mould and stuff like that. I forget what the other problem was. And then we did the façade I was telling you about -- architectural façade. And this final project was a free project. You could do what you wanted, and he went to, one thing, he went around and encouraged everyone in their own little directions. And I can't remember how I got onto this motion thing. I first started out with, I wanted to do something with wire. Then I was encouraged to put something on the wire and then we noticed that this thing oscillated and why not do something with that? One thing, step, led to another and we got into this very strange and interesting thing. It was a real kinetic sculpture.

ROBERT BROWN: But you didn't have to spend weeks on figure sculpture?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, no. It wasn't academic. But this was the astonishing thing because he never showed us what his work was. So a couple of years later when we kind of dropped in to see him...He'd invited us on a Saturday afternoon to visit him at his studio in Brooklyn. And his work was really very stylized, academic. Sort of National Sculpture Society type of work.

ROBERT BROWN: Like Manship?

DIMITRI HADZI: Manship-type. I remember he did some wonderful wood carvings for railroad stations. Something like that. And then he did a hooded nun, but a very stylized hood. Very fantastic technique. But mostly a kind of stylized style which some of the people at the National Sculpture Society have.

ROBERT BROWN: So it was remarkable then, the way that he...?

DIMITRI HADZI: He just kept it out. No one knew that. How he could encourage such real modern adventurous stuff...

ROBERT BROWN: By the way, were your and your fellow students conscious of, that your kind of wild things were modern at that point? Or did you just...?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well we knew that they were modern, but we didn't know much about the history of art or anything. We just knew that they were...I became aware of Henry Moore in that year because in '46, they had the big show at the Museum of Modern Art. And that's interesting too -- to get away from Cooper Union for a minute. One of the things that was good about having these part-time jobs -- particularly later on, was that I could spend alot of time on 57th Street where all the galleries were concentrated and also the museums. And I spent...really knew what was going on. But I remember seeing the Henry Moore show and I said, "Oh, what junk. All those holes!" And they had all these writings on the wall. But I figured there must be something to this man because he's at the Museum and this looks like very serious stuff. So I would go maybe almost every day -- three, four or five times a week. Just go and look and look and look and read these things. And little by little the whole thing took. I realized I'd really learned and was influenced obviously quite a bit by him. That's why I don't have patience with people who just put down modern art or music because they don't put the effort into it. Everything comes the hard way with me, the same with chamber music. I had to listen to it over and over and over until something started.

ROBERT BROWN: What was it that you think you saw at that time in Moore's work?

DIMITRI HADZI: Several things. I was obviously fascinated by his different use of materials. Stone and woodcarvings and the drawings. Well, (and) the philosophical concepts. He was relating the figure to mountains and the truth of materials at that time was very strong, which much later was turned around and negated.

ROBERT BROWN: Do you mean in you?

DIMITRI HADZI: No, in Henry Moore himself. Because he'd talk of the quality of stone and wood and bronze and the certain truth of them. Of course he violated all of those. One knows that in art there are rules, but you always violate them anyway. So it was really a staggering experience. The other place was Kurt Valentin's gallery on 57th Street. I used to go there so often in my army boots and dungarees and t-shirt that, eventually, even Kurt Valentin would sort of smile and bow when I would come in. (laughs) That's where I saw my, I saw some Picassos there and that's where the Lipschitz, I got hooked on Lipschitz there. They used to show alot of his work there. And I saw Calder there and Marino Marini. And that was for me a big temple. I'll never forget the experience. I happened to walk in by chance at an opening -- the Calder exhibition. Of course the gallery wasn't that enormous like the galleries today with their huge spaces. So these big mobiles are swirling around and you had to dodge them to get through. And they were having their cocktails and they were all dressed up and there I was, in my usual t-shirt. So I got a little embarrassed by it so I started walking out and I bumped into one of the mobiles and one of those things fell off -- clank! (laughs) and it was like that scene with Lon Chaney in the "Phantom of the Opera" where this girl takes his mask off while he's playing the organ, he turns around and (laughs) everyone looks. The more I tried to juggle that thing the more it shook. It was real...It was hysterical. I just fled when I finally got that damn thing on.

ROBERT BROWN: And Valentin never appeared himself?

DIMITRI HADZI: No. No, he was in the next room.

ROBERT BROWN: Did you ever have talks with him?

DIMITRI HADZI: No. I never got to talk to him. I wish I'd had money in those days because I'd (have) loved to have bought some of the drawings and prints. They were very reasonable. But I was on fifty-two dollars, twenty dollars a week I think it was, yes. Eventually my dealer in New York, Stephen Radich, he was one of Kurt Valentin's assistants and when Kurt Valentin died, Radich got quite a few of the stock that Valentin had and so I was able to buy some of the things. I got some Picasso prints, some Beckmanns. I even have a Léger lithograph with "dedicated to Kurt."

ROBERT BROWN: Did you like Expressionistic work? Did you like the German Expressionists?

DIMITRI HADZI: No I didn't at the time, as a matter of fact. I saw my first Beckmanns there. And I even met Max Beckmann at the Brooklyn Museum where I also went for a couple of years. That was another thing that I did. I went to the Brooklyn Museum during the day and the Cooper Union at night. It was pretty intense. And my friends were studying with Beckmann or (Ruffino) Tamayo. And I didn't like Beckmann's work, and it's very odd because now I own about sixteen to eighteen Beckmann prints and I went through Germany with Peter Selz when he was collecting Beckmanns for the big Beckmann exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. So I'm really hooked on, I really like Beckmann's work very much. But it took a long...I wasn't really ready for ...I was more into Picasso and the Cubists at that time.

ROBERT BROWN: Those you could like right away?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. And I think perhaps because of my scientific training. I don't know. But even to this day I'm still basically a Cubist. I spent alot of time at the Museum of Modern Art. That was my big training ground as a museum. Much more than the Guggenheim. Well, the Guggenheim then was the, I forget the name now...

ROBERT BROWN: The Museum of Non-Objective Art.

DIMITRI HADZI: The Museum of Non-Objective Art. Right. Yes. And I used to go there quite a bit. That was a fun place. But really the Museum of Modern Art was a real school for me. I spent alot of time there in front of the Picassos, Braques and Juan Gris.

ROBERT BROWN: So museums and galleries, certain galleries were equally important to school?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, absolutely, oh absolutely. And it was fun because my teachers realized that I was spending alot of time there and they'd ask me, "Well, Dimitri, have you seen any good shows lately?" Or we'd go out for beer after class or go watch the boxing matches on t.v. and I'd go out with Marcicano and Kantor. I was twenty-five, I got out when I was thirty. But I was able to participate with these people adn they respected my interests...

ROBERT BROWN: You were a bit older than some of the other students?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes, because I was twenty-five and, sure, they were just eighteen or nineteen. But there were a few G.I.'s there and we made a big difference in the class because we really were hustling. We were eager to learn and we weren't afraid to work. And that was really inspirational for the other, for the young kids.

ROBERT BROWN: Were there other teachers that were pretty important to you? You mentioned Kratina as being important.

DIMITRI HADZI: Also Milton Hebald.

ROBERT BROWN: What did he teach?

DIMITRI HADZI: He was, sculpture. Second-year sculpture. And John Hovannis. Those were my three sculpture teachers there. And Hebald was a very good teacher. I also studied with him at the Brooklyn Museum. It was funny how, (I was) working on studies for a stone sculpture. This was the second year at Cooper Union and I was doing rather badly. I'd been so inspired by Kratina and then I was having such trouble in my second year and Hebald would come around and say, "what did you get last year?" And I said, "I got an A." and he'd scratch his head and wonder how I got an A. (laughs) Then I was, through -- it wasn't boredom -- I was just really getting into a rage because I couldn't resolve...I was doing a little study for the Greek Civil War, a monument, with brother killing brother motif. Very cubistic and I just couldn't resolve it. I started very realistically and then, I got so furious and outraged that I took a knife and I just slashed the thing. And there it was! And Hebald passed by and said, "Oh! That's great!" He called out and stopped the class and said, "This is sculpture!" So I got on to another...my life started again as a sculptor.

ROBERT BROWN: But it wasn't quite an accident that you were attacking it?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh I was attacking it, yes. So I started with wood, to carve that, but I never finished the carving. But anyway, later on I helped Hebald with some of his projectss and the same with Hovannis who was another teacher.

ROBERT BROWN: Was the second year any different from the first except that you had another teacher?

DIMITRI HADZI: It was a different approach, but he really made you feel he had a love for sculpture and plastic quality. He was a very different kind of teacher from Kratina, but equally -- not as inspiring as Kratina, but he was just the right man, after Kratina for me. I think Kratina turned people on more in the first year than, say, Hebald would. Hebald taught me a great deal.

ROBERT BROWN: Was Hebald more deliberate and more accurate?

DIMITRI HADZI: He's really basically, he's also very Lipschitz-oriented and that's where I probably got the influence from him, also. And he hasn't changed very much, I don't think. But his whole attitude is that if he's happy with what he's doing and he's having some financial success, that's enough. He gave up the whole battle of struggling with galleries. Kratina never went to galleries. At least he's quite different from my painter teachers who were more active like Morris Kantor and Marcicano.

ROBERT BROWN: Was there among these men different attitudes about the coming, at this very time, of abstraction coming into prominence? American abstraction, too?

DIMITRI HADZI: Do you mean abstract expressionists? One certainly didn't get the feeling that, in my class, that it was being taken very seriously. Pollock was making a splash. But it wasn't like later on, when in art schools they were all copying the abstract expressionists. We were pretty much cubist-oriented because in creative design, where I can't think of the names of the teachers at the moment, they were very cubist-oriented. So with all the pattern and other things, we were doing, working with flowers or with shells, (we) were always very cubist-oriented. So there was kind of a little underclass war between the studio painting section and the creative design ones. The creative design people treated their thing like Fine Arts and, of course, those easel painters didn't consider that -- "they were decorators..." sort of a thing. But I learned from both. I don't think my fellow students, of course they didn't go to the galleries as much as I did, had any idea. And even then I think I just briefly saw, I saw the first Guston that was in front of the Eighth Street Whitney Museum. That was at the entrance. This first abstract expressionist painting. The dark red center one. That created, it seemed to me, in the ambience, quite a bit of excitement. And I remember alot of young students, probably from other schools, looking at a de Kooning black and white collage adn I'd never heard of de Kooning. But later on, toward the latter part of my, sort of the '49's and fifties, before leaving for Europe. At night, after the class at Cooper Union we would go over to the Cedar Bar and that's when I first saw de Kooning. And I never met him, never talked to him. I was introduced to Franz Kline. All that bunch would be at the Cedar Bar and...

ROBERT BROWN: Well, you just happened to go there because artists, art students went there?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. Well that's where the artists went. And you wanted to hob nob and try to see them, like stars, you know? But they were very regular. They were heavy drinkers and stuff like that.

ROBERT BROWN: People like Kantor and all didn't seem to, at least to you as a student, resent these new stars?

DIMITRI HADZI: I never really discussed that very much with him. Kantor was almost like a solitary painter, I would say. Most of his paintings were based on Monhegan Island adn they were rock formations and stuff like that. He had a grid system which he worked within. But he was a very good solid formal, he was very good on composition. He was very sympathetic. I used to come in very tired from my working as a waiter and he would come over to me and say, "You're doing very well. Go home and sleep." (laughs)

ROBERT BROWN: So you finished at Cooper Union in '50 in the spring of 1950 and you graduated with pretty good honors?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. I got it with honors. I got two prizes and what not.

ROBERT BROWN: And the Fulbright, you'd already gotten, too?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. I was off to Greece. I should mention that the first artist I ever met, was before the war, was...who played a big role in my development, too, was Michael Lekakis, also of Greek extraction. A Greek doctor friend of mine in Brooklyn took me to visit him. And of course I didn't know what the heck it was all about. There were these big wooden carvings that looked like primitive art. And I was in Chemistry at the time of course. So when I came back from the Army and I got into Cooper Union, I went back to see him. And he became kind of my model figure because he was very dedicated, very honest, very hard-working and that was a good model I thought.

ROBERT BROWN: Did he also go look at galleries and things?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. He did. Well that's how I became a collector. He was always...I think he was at the Bertha Schaffer Gallery at the time and he was venturing into bronzes. He was mostly a wood carver. I used to have a little owl made out of pine, which I have here now. I'd always wanted to buy it and he wanted sixty-five dollars for it, which was alot of money for me at that time. One day I'm on my way to Bond Brothers in Times Square to buy a suit and two pairs of pants for thirty-five dollars. I had my thirty-five bucks with me and I thought I'd stop in and see Mike. And Mike was just groaning about where he was going to get the money he had to cast these things for the show. He had these waxes and these figures. So I said, "Well Michael, I have thirty-five dollars if you want to sell that figure." (laughs) So I bought the little sculpture for thirty-five dollars and I didn't get the suit. That was my first acquisition. That's why I don't have any patience with people who complain about not having money to buy things. If you like something, you find ways to do it. You just give up a few things. To me the suit was very important, especially with two pairs of pants. So you just tighten the belt, you know? And that helped him, he never forgot that.

ROBERT BROWN: You make do with what you have.

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes.

(Sides 3 and 4 of 8).

DIMITRI HADZI: So I can't think of anything else at the moment about Cooper Union.

ROBERT BROWN: But you liked it there?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, I loved it.

ROBERT BROWN: It was a really good time for you.

DIMITRI HADZI: I loved it, yes. I made alot of good friends there. It was rather exciting because you knew you were at one of the best schools in the country. And it was hard to get in and hard to stay in and the teachers were very encouraging. I got very good grades there. Everyone who has gone to Cooper Union really loves the place.

ROBERT BROWN: Did everyone teach, almost all the people there were involved in teaching...they weren't administrators?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh no, they weren't administrators. The thing about Cooper Union -- they never had that much money so the people who taught there taught more because they loved the place. Of course the students were so stimulating and exciting to work with. I had a friend or two who had to quit because they just couldn't support their families. so they went to Columbia or a place like that but they all missed Cooper Union. There was something about the selection of the Cooper Union students...(There was) something special.

ROBERT BROWN: You left there in '50. Were there any European instructors coming in at that time?

DIMITRI HADZI: No, there was just...at the Brooklyn Museum there was Tamayo and Beckmann. John Ferrin just came from Paris. I also worked a summer with Ralston Crawford, who just died recently, and he was very exciting -- for me anyway. He was very encouraging. I had very good relationships with my instructors. They all took me seriously. They always sensed someone -- like I do now. I know the ones who are really going to be dedicated artists and you try to help them as much as you can.

ROBERT BROWN: Was the Brooklyn Museum School as good a set up as Cooper Union?

DIMITRI HADZI: (It was) very different because (at) Cooper Union you didn't just get in by paying. That's where some of my G.I. bill money went. But I also got a fellowship there to study engraving with Petterdy from Yale. So I worked with Manfredo Schwartz, who was a very good teacher for me, Ralston Crawford, Hebald, those were the main...and then Petterdy. Now I regret not working with Tamayo or Beckmann. I had the opportunity but...

ROBERT BROWN: You didn't care for them?

DIMITRI HADZI: I didn't care for their work, no. Of course now I love both of them (laughs).

ROBERT BROWN: Did it look too crude to you at that point?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. I guess it looked crude and...but it was also there that one started seeing some of the influence of abstract expressionism. There were some people working more abstract -- I think in John Ferrin's class. I think in Tamayo's class he was really restricted to a more figurative kind of painting and one of the things that really put me off was too many people copying.
Well, they went to work with these people because they liked their work and they wanted to imitate it. So Beckmann's students' work looked like Beckmann's and Ferrin's was like, Ferrin's was more of an open kind of thing. And Tamayo's students looked more like Tamayo. But now I realize there's nothing wrong with that. You learn by imitation and I was just super critical at that time.

ROBERT BROWN: You thought you'd find that some students never move out from under?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. That's what was happening. Some of them just stayed so...

ROBERT BROWN: If you had enough commitment you might -- you probably would have...

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. The Brooklyn Museum was a fun place because the difference there was, as I've said, that the students paid there. But what was exciting was that -- besides the instructors, August, Augustus Peck did a remarkable job of getting those giants there. If you can imagine the Brooklyn Museum having Beckmann, Tamayo, Ferrin, Crawford, you name it, down to Ruben Sand. And the students were mostly G.I.'s and they were really eager, aggressive and that's where I saw my first big canvasses. Harry Jackson was one of them, do you know Harry Jackson? He does sort of Remington cowboy, cowboys and indians. He's enormously successful. He has his own foundry and whatnot, now.

ROBERT BROWN: And he was one of the students there?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. But he was a real abstract, a very good abstract painter. He was our cowboy. Our "Streets of Laredo" boy. But he became very academic and a very good businessman, too.

ROBERT BROWN: When did you, did somebody encourage you to apply for this European fellowship?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh I should say something about this, this is where Hebald played a big role also because I was really spending more time with painting. I had two nights of painting and one night of sculpture. I was more of a painter, let's say.

ROBERT BROWN: Did you do any figurative things at that time?

DIMITRI HADZI: Ah they were mostly...yes. I remember there was a storefront (in a) Cubistic style and then we did some owls and circus scenes. But very formal type things. Not much figures, no. And then the sculpture I was doing, I was doing at Cooper Union. But the painting I was doing I was also doing at the Brooklyn Museum. I'm getting a little confused about what I was doing at that time and it was half and half toward 1949 and '50. I was doing half painting and half sculpture. But I thought I'd try for a Fulbright in Greece in painting. And then when I asked Milton Hebald for a recommendation, he said, very wisely, he says, "You probably won't get it because who goes to Greece for painting? If you're going to try for painting you should go to France or maybe Germany or England. But certainly not Greece. You should try for sculpture if you want to go to Greece."

ROBERT BROWN: Why did you want to go to Greece?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, because I spoke the language and that was one of the requirements for a Fulbright, so I switched it to sculpture.

ROBERT BROWN: (garbled) that huh?

DIMITRI HADZI: So Hebald played. Then I helped Hebald later on. I paid him back by telling him about the American Academy in Rome so he eventually became a Fellow there. So help one, you know, it works back and forth. So I left for Europe on the La Guardia with my...that was my first ship, because it was my first Transatlantic voyage, because I was on a ship going across the Pacific. And I went to Athens and I went to the Polytechnic there. And they didn't know what to do with me because I'd already graduated from a school. But you had to be attached to a school so I went there and decided to -- well my project was to study stone carving. And that was interesting because -- well interesting and not interesting because the training there was extremely academic and not even...when we worked from the model you went up to the model and measured the model and you brought back the measurements, and you stuck toothpicks in the clay. And the training we had at the Brooklyn Museum and at Cooper Union was to work by eye - no measuring. You would make a control once in a while with calibers. So they did that for about three to four years and the other thing that they did for carving, they copied the plaster copies from antiquity.

ROBERT BROWN: So this was pretty daunting to you, then?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. I'd talk about Henry Moore and I'd brought books with me to show the other students and the instructor there, Tombros. who we all knew in Greece -- he's dead now, said, "That's good, Henry Moore is very good but after four years at the Polytechnic you can do what you want to do but now you have to do all this training.." Of course what happens in four years, you just become, they kill any kind of creative spirit. It was deadly. And I knew it (from) going to a great school like Cooper and I could see in what they were doing there and the good students, the ones, the creative ones quit after a year or two because they could see they were prisoners. And this business of doing this for four years of that and then you do what you want, well, you're dead. So, anyway, one day Tombros comes in and says, "Ah, I've got good news for you. Your friend is coming." I said, "what friend?" "This Henry, Henry Moore's coming!"
"Oh!," so I said, "what's happening?" So he said, "well, there's going to be a big exhibition of his work here." So I, obviously, being a Fulbright scholar, I was given an invitation to the opening. So that was my first meeting with Henry...when I just saw him in London. But that's not in Greece, that was many years later. And that was very exciting and I try to remember which came first, whether it was the exhibition or he came to the school. I think the exhibition was first. And of course not many people spoke English there. It was an enormous exhibition, a retrospective. It was...the British consul was sending around. I was excited because it was the second time I'd seen a big show of Moore's. The first time was the Museum of Modern Art in '46 and this would be '50. And Henry Moore was just wonderful because he'd be involved with all these dignitaries and whatnot and I'd be hanging around the wood sculpture and every time he'd...every once in a while he'd just take a break and come over and talk to me (laughs) So I was absolutely thrilled talking with this man and feeling this wooden sculpture, the reclining figure. He was so nice.

ROBERT BROWN: You would ask him?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes, and then of course, he would be pulled away to meet some ambassador or something like that.
He was delighted that I was the only young artist there, a student. Because those things are awfully official. And then it was arranged that he was to visit the art school, the Polytekneon, and he came down and I told him...He was just really appalled by the, you know, the carving really technically very good training but there was no encouragement about creativity or creating. they carved all these...I started carving a kouros figure and I worked on that for about half a year and then I found out that I couldn't take it. All these finished objects became property of the government which sold them to businesses or banks or sent them out to embassies. So I just dropped it -- never finished it. Too bad, but, I was looking forward to bringing it back to the States -- this wonderful sixth-century Kouros, you know?

ROBERT BROWN: So at least you feel you would have done a good rendering?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. Because I think that even now I, I probably can't do it in this program that we have in the Carpenter Center, but if I was to set up a program somewhere I would absolutely recommend at least copying at least one object.

ROBERT BROWN: (Because) you learn so much about it?

DIMITRI HADZI: You do, yes. I copied two things. I copied that (Kouros), and then in clay I copied the horse's head from the Parthenon pedimental group. I learned more by copying that and also that figure. But if you do that for four years, it's just too much. So I think if you just copy a few things and you'll really understand. I couldn't believe the geometry in that horse's head. That famous big head.

ROBERT BROWN: Did that take up alot of your time at the Polytechnic?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, I went there every day. I made very good friends there. When I wasn't there I was either visiting museums or traveling around the country. While I was there I also went to Turkey and Egypt. And that's where I became...I wish I knew more about architecture then, but...Oh I know what happened about the Egyptian trip. Are you interested in the Egyptian trip?

ROBERT BROWN: Yes, sure.

DIMITRI HADZI: I made friends with the people at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. And that was my first introduction to classicists and art historians and all that. And I made friends with two of them who wanted to take a trip to Egypt. So we planned on this trip and we went to the Egyptian consulate to get the visa to go there. It was absolutely forbidden. And we could not because what happened was that Queen Frederika, at the time, was at a party at which King Farouk made a pass at her (laughs). she told her husband King Constantine or King George -- I forget which -- and of course that broke, it got into the New York Times, Time Magazine and the press and all relationships between Greece and Egypt were stopped momentarily. So we couldn't get a visa. Even though we were Americans. So our next choice was to go to Turkey. So we went to see Ayia Sophia, and we went to Ankora also. And it was my idea, I said, "why don't we try to get a visa from Turkey? They don't know we're from Greece."

ROBERT BROWN: You were with these scholars?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. So Spiro Brionus and Bob Will, I guess one is a Byzantine scholar now and Fred Will is at Wellesley or some place. A poet, I think, and scholar -- a philosopher. And it was a great idea except that we needed photographs. So we went to Taxim Square. It's an enormous square and there was a photographer with a tripod and a hood and he took these pictures of us and we got on the tram and we were headed toward the Consulate and I thought I'd look at the pictures and admire them. And they were slowly darkening! So I said, "let's hurry!" (laughs) So we made it in time and we got visas and because of my quick thinking we were able to get to Egypt. So we went to Cairo and down to Luxor and it was really just a staggering experience. I'd love to go back now.

ROBERT BROWN: So the architecture as much as the sculpture in those
countries impressed you?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes, scale and the use of materials and the reliefs. It was really something great for a New York kid to be experiencing.

ROBERT BROWN: As you look back what were some of the effects that looking at all that ancient art had on you?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, I guess a sense of flaw for one thing...From a formal point of view it was very...The structure and of course, now it's showing up in my big granite pieces. Also the sense of mystery, the Egyptian, the whole Egyptian culture is still today a great mystery to me as it is to many people. But I think the scale was just very impressive to me. I even, in those days, I don't know if you're allowed to do it now, I don't know if they stopped it. But I climbed up to the top of a pyramid in Giza, Cheops, to...just to, not from a romantic or anything...just to feel the sense of scale climbing up that thing, boulder by boulder, and then, once on top, I could see how everything was laid out.
I was always interested in scale and orientation (to see) how things were laid out and then to experience the interior of the pyramid where you walk up this inclined plane. I was just dazzled by the workmanship of the walls, the granite, finish, between one block to the next. Why I said about mystery...this enormous pyramid, this mysterious incline leading to a very small chamber where the sarcophagus was. They still haven't solved all those problems and...or the mysteries as far as I'm concerned. So those were all the things which triggered my imagination and my architectural interest.

ROBERT BROWN: How did this compare with your reactions to the classical Greek sculpture?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, classical Greek sculpture was a big surprise for me because at Cooper Union...I mean it was a great school but they never talked about the past. I used to go to the museums on my own and...but we had the bas reliefs from the Panathenaic procession from the Acropolis, the Parthenon, all around the rooms and no one ever pointed to them. so we just assumed they were just academic work. And then when I went to Greece and saw them I realized they were not very academic. They were great sculptures. That was a big revelation -- that classical Greek sculpture and architecture was really great.

ROBERT BROWN: What made it seem great to you -- classical Greek sculpture -- and not simply academic?

DIMITRI HADZI: That's a good question. There's a certain vitality. Even though the proportions are very close to nature -- you know obviously the horses and the figures and the...there's something about the big X, the unknown, what is it that separates that from academic...? And I think that one of the things is that there's certain vitality that you can't put your finger on because you know...Is it the proportions, what is it? There's some mystery there and you can see just by looking at some government procession or government relief in Washington -- you can see how static they are and no matter how much movement they try to get in, it's dead, and this thing has a certain life to it. So that's one way in which I differentiate between academic work and something that's really alive and creative. But of course the early stuff, like most sculptors and artists, they prefer the archaic because it's got more tension and whatnot. But I like good classical work, too. As a matter of fact I've gotten to like through the years, because of this prejudice everyone has toward the early stuff, I've gotten to like quite a bit of the Hellenistic work, too. And, obviously, because of my interest in the Baroque, it's moved...But, now, of course, I'm getting away from that getting back to simple, or getting towards simple shapes and forms. But I think some of the Hellenistic work is very exciting, too.

ROBERT BROWN: And you liked it then, to a degree?

DIMITRI HADZI: Not as much then, I liked the classical and archaic, then. But the Hellenistic came much later. Mostly, living in Rome, I became familiar with...I got to the British Museum and I saw the Pergamom sculptures -- I went to Berlin, and I saw the Temple there, and they are very dramatic. That's another ball game completely. It's very different. The scale is different and everything. And the other thing that impressed me enormously in Greece was the early cultures at Mycenae and Tiryns and that's all coming back now in my work now, I think. And people say, "Yes, Stonehenge." But I knew more about cyclopean walls in those cultures than I knew about the northern dolmens and all that. Actually, it's only in the last few years that I've really become familiar with those...

ROBERT BROWN: Northern things?

DIMITRI HADZI: Northern things, yes.

ROBERT BROWN: When you were there, in that year, you were able to travel and see Mycenae and all those places?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, I did alot of traveling, yes. I had a, I forget who the director at the American School of Classical Studies was. I think he's in Cleveland now. I don't know if he's still alive actually, but all my friends wanted me to join their trip around the Peloponnese because everyone --each person did their number there. I mean if you were a sculpture specialist, you'd talk on sculpture, if you were a literature (specialist), you would...you know. So in all these trips around Olympia and the Peloponnese in general, everyone had to say something about...that was related to his field. So they thought that it would be a great idea if I came along as a sculptor. (So I said,) "I'd love to." So this director couldn't see why I'd want to go and said, "well, you do contemporary sculpture, I don't see the use of you going on this trip." Can you believe that? (laughs) I hated that man and if I could remember his name, so I could mention it in the mike...! (laughs)

ROBERT BROWN: But the students could see the virtue of your coming along?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh absolutely, sure. Because we used to go up to the Parthenon and they were always interested in what I had to say because I'd see it with a different eye and also in (terms of) techniques. I was very disappointed. It was an opportunity to hear about the literature, the history, everything. It was a two week trip -- fantastic. So I had to do all of that on my own which was not the same thing.

ROBERT BROWN: You made some Greek friends too, didn't you?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, yes.

ROBERT BROWN: Among the fellow students or...?

DIMITRI HADZI: The fellow students, yes. I wish I could track them down now because they were very important while I was living there. I realize how generous these Greeks are...(telephone interruption) To give you an example of their generosity, one of my friends in mid-winter -- winter can be very severe in Greece -- He came in wearing an army field jacket. An old war surplus type. I admired it and I asked him where he got it because I had left mine behind in New York and the next thing you knew he just took it off his back and gave it to me (laughs) and he walked home. It's impossible to give a Greek back anything, so he went home in his shirtsleeves in winter! That will give you an idea. I finally, I had to -- two of my friends -- I invited them to Mykonos. Mykonos, because the government has studios. There are four places in Greece where artists can go and stay for several weeks and work there. And so I invited two of them to Mykonos for two weeks and no arguments about payment. I'm taking, inviting you. Because it's hard as heck to pick up a bill in that country -- they're always so incredible. So I took them to Mykonos for two weeks before Mykonos got so popular.

ROBERT BROWN: And they were very poor weren't they?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes.

ROBERT BROWN: They were just recovering from a war then?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. I think my friend, Kostos had T.B. and they were poverty stricken. (It was) very bad, yes.

ROBERT BROWN: The war was over, was that right?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. Well, the civil (war) had just ended too. I would take these trips and the buses would be stopped every once in a while and identifications checked and whatnot because there were still elements floating aorund -- communists and whatnot. One felt that there was...that the Civil War was almost still on.

ROBERT BROWN: Was there a felling of repression among the people?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, it depends which side you were on, see? I was a little upset because both my friends were very left and one of them as a matter of fact was a partisan who fought side by side with the British and then later on fought against the British in Athens so I found it very hard to put these things together.

ROBERT BROWN: Was there still an element of rebelliousness among some of those students there? Even unconsciously?

DIMITRI HADZI: No, I don't think so.

ROBERT BROWN: Most of them stuck out the four years?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. They weren't... the two students I was talking about, they eventually quit because (they had) strong egos, (were) very strongly motivated and they couldn't see spending their time there doing that. Occasionally I run into people who remembered me. I'd have never remembered some of the students -- there were other classes and they remembered (me) because I was the American there, and in case I ever meet an artist they say, "I remember you at the Polytekneon. You were there..." And...

ROBERT BROWN: What would they go on to do if they stayed in Greece?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well they, some of them go, went to Paris, or go to Italy. Quite a few of them came to Italy to work because there weren't very many opportunities in Greece at that time. And they'd try to get scholarships --Italian government scholarships to come. Some of them went into restoration or...

ROBERT BROWN: Well at the end of this year, '50-'51, I guess, did you know what you'd be doing next? Did you think you'd be coming back to New York?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well I was saving my money. Because I was getting something like, what was it, $200 a month, which was an awful lot of money, particularly in Greece, then. And when I was there it was something like 30,000 drachmas to the dollar, which sounds like alot. But I'd go with a big suitcase and collect my $200 (laughs). So I was stashing that away, living very modestly and everything was cheap anyway and I was hoping to stay on a couple more years. And I wasn't as smart as my, you see some of my academic friends were very clever. They never told me that you could try for a renewal. If you're in the academic world you know about these things but since I wasn't really in the academic world I didn't know about this. And they said, did you try for the renewal? I said, "what renewal?" And they said, "well you know if you have a Fulbright you can try for another year." So I ran down to the office and they said, "well it's too late for that, but maybe we can get you an extension." So they got me a three month extension for the summer. But I could have had, being the first Fulbright artist, I could have had that second year very easily. But then, everything works out. One day I was at the embassy and by chance I looked at the bulletin board and I noticed that there was a (notice) that was addressed to the Veterans of World War II that whoever was entitled to the G.I. bill had to sign up with a registered school by July 23rd and this was July 20th, I think. Three days to go and Athens wasn't set up for the G.I. bill. Obviously, because of the Civil War and whatnot, and the closest place was Italy and Rome. So I had three years of G.I. bill time coming so I hop a plane, sign up and I spent a day in Rome, two days, signed up and flew back to Athens and I was enrolled in some...So that terminated my...I spent the summer in Greece and that terminated my stay. Otherwise I would have stayed on for who knows maybe forever. So that's how I got into...I never expected to go to Italy.

ROBERT BROWN: But you felt on the other hand that you wanted to look alot in Greece and maybe work there at some point?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes, sure. Because I was comfortable with the language and I liked the people and the food. But it seems it was one of those things that really worked out for the best because I think I, well who knows? It's hard to say but I think I probably developed quicker being in Italy, being exposed to Italian culture, the Renaissance and the Baroque and the --also much more active contemporary movement. And also much more easier to get around, to get to Germany and France and other places than Greece was. So it was one of those you know, luck plays such a remarkable thing in one's life -- first meeting these people at the YMHA (Young Men's Hebrew Association) and then seeing that bulletin board (laughs).

This is the second interview with Dimitri Hadzi, Robert Brown, interviewer. Cambridge, MA, March 3, 1981.

ROBERT BROWN: We've talked now about your time in Greece and the circumstances of your coming to Rome. And that was about 1951 or so?

DIMITRI HADZI: 1951. That's right and I think I might have mentioned that I didn't have much of an idea of ending up in Italy. I was planning to stay on in Greece and once I did get to Rome, I went to the, on the G.I. bill I had to enroll in a school. And I went to several schools, but the main one was the Museo e scuola dei ars e industriale which was an industrial arts school at which I learned about ceramics, jewelry making, but mostly wax technique. And it was an interesting experience because most of the students were very young. They ranged from about nine to eighteen and it was a wonderful school in which they taught everything -- welding, metal raising and one had to attend in order to collect the G.I. bill, but I was really interested in learning this. There were many people who were on the G.I. bill who didn't attend; they just went there to collect their check every month. But I thought it was a wonderful opportunity, first of all, to get to know Italians better and to learn some of their crafts. And I guess the weather had a great deal to do with...how it got me involved in pottery because the place was very cold -- enormous studios with one pot-bellied stove in the center, and the only way to keep warm was to work on a kick wheel and dip your fingers in the warm water and just raise one pot after another just to keep warm (laughs). So what was amusing was that most Italians have enormous gifts with their hands adn those little kids could really raise pots with no difficulty at all and they would just gather around me and watch me raise this wavering thing and I was a center of amusement. But they were very patient with me.

ROBERT BROWN: Had you gotten somewhat interested in ceramics?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. I learned a little about repoussee technique there and I must say that the climate was just wonderful -- I don't mean the temperature climate, but (it was) shortly after the war and Americans were very well-liked and a kind of curiosity and they were fascinated that an American would come to Italy to study. So they were very friendly and helpful.

ROBERT BROWN: And these were really very skilled masters?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, absolutely. Yes. They were professionals who put in a few hours a week teaching.

(End of side 3/of 8)
(Side 4/of 8. Interview continues.)

DIMITRI HADZI: ...and also there were some people like Fascini and Greco -- people like that with big reputations who would also teach there.

ROBERT BROWN: Were they sculptors?

DIMITRI HADZI: They were sculptors, yes. And...

ROBERT BROWN: Were they fairly conservative, though, in their tastes?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, not really. Actually, mostly, the artists who taught ceramics and sculpture were mostly leftists. And I remember that Leoncello was a communist -- he was the only one who kind of looked at me a little askance because I was an American. He was doing sort of figurative, they were abstracts but always the partisans...big reliefs in ceramics, ceramic technique of the partisans fighting the Germans, etc., etc. Which was also a theme which was quite popular and fresh in the minds of the Italians then. There was Cartuso of course the famous Forse ardientina near the Appian Way where the...

ROBERT BROWN: The massacre?

DIMITRI HADZI: They massacred 350 odd people and they did a most remarkable tomb there where Mirko did the gates and perhaps it's still the most moving monument that I know of.

ROBERT BROWN: You were the beneficiary, though, of the artisan tradition continued in Italy. If you wanted to learn a certain technique there were masters who could teach you?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh absolutely, yes.

ROBERT BROWN: And you did jewelry making too?

DIMITRI HADZI: I was interested in repoussee. It always depended on, to a great extent, who was teaching at the time. And when I was there, there were a few people who were very good repoussee people -- you know, hammering metal in reverse and they encouraged me and I learned quite a bit in the repoussee technique. And repoussee technique was very popular at that time. Afro and Mirko -- that was before they became very popular -- earned quite a bit of income by making jewelry.

ROBERT BROWN: Were you working precious metal?

DIMITRI HADZI: Brass (laughs). Don't forget I was on the G.I. bill! But occasionally I would get some silver which was quite cheap --but one started out with brass and started out with very elementary exercises.

ROBERT BROWN: Then you did the lost wax technique?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes I learned the lost wax technique there. I did a Roman cat and I used pretty much the same techniques as (in) raising pottery. I created this cat by working from the inside and pushing the forms out, in wax that is. I had it cast and it was admired by the professors there and I was very excited because it was one of my first bronzes of course.

ROBERT BROWN: But this was something that you particularly wanted to do of the three things you did there?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes, yes. I must preface this by saying that, when I come to think of it, that wasn't really the first school I went to. When I flew into Rome to sign up for a school I met some Americans who were going to, I don't remember the name of it, it was a private studio at which occasionally a person like Afro would come for a critique and whatnot. And it was run by the widow of a painter whose name escapes me at the moment and I went there and that was a kind of...there were some serious students, but most of them were really goofing off there. And I was, I made some good friends there but I became rather disenchanted with it -- I was wasting my money there, I mean the government's money and my own time. And that's how I went to the Museo Tesconduciale because where all these various techniques were...

ROBERT BROWN: There weren't the distractions...

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes.

ROBERT BROWN: You began going out to exhibitions and getting to know various artists in Rome?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. Of course I was looking forward to seeing more of the work of Marino Marini, Afro and Mirko, who were showing...I'd seen their work in New York at the Catherine Viviano Gallery on 57th Street and Marino's work of course at Curt Valentin. And so that whole Italian, Italian art was in those days quite popular and people were getting to Rome quite often and bringing back works by these people. That's all finished now. American chauvinism has taken over (laughs). Alot of good things are happening in Italy but we don't know about them anymore.

ROBERT BROWN: Did you then get to go meet some of these people?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, it was very easy to meet them because it was just like there were films...(telephone interruption).
Everything was relatively small scale at that time and the big meeting place was...two meeting places: via Veneto, which became quite popular later on for the film people, but Piazza del Popolo, Rosatti's was the meeting place and you just went there for a coffee if you could afford it. I think I bought myself a coffee once a week or twice a week there. But there was everyone there -- Fellini, Carl Levi, Afro, Mirko. That was the collecting place of movie stars and it was just one big intellectual circle there. It was just the most amazing thing. Now I realize how fortunate I was to have experienced this. And through there of course, little by little one met everyone there.

ROBERT BROWN: Did you get into this group pretty well? Did you acquire Italian pretty quickly?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, pretty slow on the Italian, but the Italians are not like the French, they're pretty sympathetic and they...if they admire your work and your energy and your curiosity then, they are much more friendly. I was well-liked from early because they saw I was serious and I took up with some of these people I would meet at the foundry and they would see that I was a serious dedicated artist so...It was a very exciting time and there was also some of those trattorias which had a prezzo fixo, fixed price, 350 lire, which was about eighty cents then, where you could have a complete dinner for that and you ate at communal tables and that was another way of meeting...of course many foreigners were there -- not only Americans but English, German, and that was for me also a very exciting time.

ROBERT BROWN: Did you get to become particular friends with any other artists at this time?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. I met Bernie Childs, who's in New York now. Meg Greenfield of Newsweek's a good friend, was one of them, my table companions, a very good friend. Frank Monaco, who's a photographer in London. There were all sorts of people, it was just really remarkable. That's all gone too of course, that type of...everyone was poor, everyone was in the same boat, it was marvelous.

ROBERT BROWN: They were accessible, partly because they were poor?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes.

ROBERT BROWN: What kind of work were you doing? You stayed at the Museo Industriale for a couple of years off and on?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. And then I met a New England artist, Bill Compton. I think he's a Franciscan or something now. Do you know much about Bill?

ROBERT BROWN: No.

DIMITRI HADZI: He's from Boston. I think he studied with Demitrus , too. Anyway, he was quite well known...there was a big article on him with color plates in Life Magazine at the time, this would be, what? '52, '51, '53 and he was moving up to Assissiand he was getting rid of his studio and someone at one of those meetings at the Piazza del Popolo mentioned that and I went and spoke to Bill and I was able to acquire his studio which was on the top floor of a...sort of a penthouse studio. It leaked and was cold and all that and he left alot of unfinished paintings behind. And he painted on masonite and I shouldn't mention this, which I used to keep the rain out (laughs). I put them up to plug up the ceiling. And I haven't seen what's happened to Compton. Occasionally I read something about him. But I thought that since you're handling the New England area, I thought you might.

ROBERT BROWN: Had you gotten to know him a bit?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, yes.

ROBERT BROWN: What was he like?

DIMITRI HADZI: Now I see he's quite typically New England. Intellectually oriented, sort of... Well he's religious, in an odd way which of course was what happened. But I thought he was a little on the strange side. I think he was a friend of Bob Cook's -- he was another New England artist who was living in Boston. He studied with Demitrius also.

ROBERT BROWN: But you now had a studio?

DIMITRI HADZI: So I had the studio, which was built by a woman who was a Sunday painter. It was something that was built on top the roof and the john was, of course, the terrace. So on rainy days you thought twice about going out there (laughs).

ROBERT BROWN: You weren't able to do much casting were you?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, I didn't do any casting there. The casting was always done at the foundry. But what I did was that I started working in wax and (did) lots of drawings and that's where the film, the film that Peter Hollander made was done in that studio.

ROBERT BROWN: How did that come about?

DIMITRI HADZI: He was on a Fulbright and he just finished his Fulbright and had some money left over and he was interested in making films and he had his, lots of film left over or something. And I met him at Piazza d' Espagna and he'd heard about me and he said, "I'll make a deal with you. If you can put me up in your studio, for a month, I'll do a film on you." He was interested in my work, actually, but he had no place to stay so he slept on the floor and he made tea every morning and he followed me around and it was quite a charming little film, actually. I just spoke to Peter the other day at the U.N.. He's a big shot there now.

ROBERT BROWN: In cultural affairs?

DIMITRI HADZI: I don't think it's just cultural. It's the filming, the film section or something like that.

ROBERT BROWN: What sort of things could people see of yours at that point? These wax studies?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes, little wax studies, and little by little, I would cast. And I was in a group show. Fellow artists have always helped me get into galleries. My New York gallery now was due to Ed Joby, the painter, mentioning to Gruenebaum that I might be available. He was looking for a sculptor. And the same thing with...I was invited to the Schneider Gallery in Rome by two other artists. It was Salvador Meo and hmm...who was the other one? I forget now.

ROBERT BROWN: But you were in a group show in Rome?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes, that was the first time I ever exhibited.

ROBERT BROWN: Where was that?

DIMITRI HADZI: Schneider Gallery.

ROBERT BROWN: Schneider Gallery, that was about '56?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh no, that was earlier. It must have been '54 or so. That was quite successful. I sold a few thingsa nd robert Schneider invited me to have my first one man show.

ROBERT BROWN: That was a few years later?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes.

ROBERT BROWN: Schneider Gallery was a pretty prominent gallery in Rome?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. It was indeed. Now it's (having) bad times. But it was one of the real leading galleries. Bob Schneider was also a Fulbright, an older man who, I think he was in Italian literature and I think he taught at Columbia and then he decided to stay on in Rome and he started (writing ) film scripts and whatnot and then he got involved with Mirko and Calye and I guess they must have talked himn into running a gallery. And the gallery was extremely interesting and successful, well Mirko and Calye were sort of directing and helping him. But then, of course Schneider thought that he could do without them (laughs)...and lost ground, I thought.

ROBERT BROWN: How would they help?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh they would, since Schneider didn't know very much about who the artists were in Italy -- because he really helped bring in lots of interesting people. Alot of leftists of course. It was an extremely active gallery...and it was there that I met Sophia Loren there and the whole crew from "Three Coins in the Fountain" and Rome was like that and you'd see these people walking like Ingrid Bergman I met there.

ROBERT BROWN: So it was a fashionable set but they weren't exclusive. They didn't...

DIMITRI HADZI: No. You'd see them walking down the street just like anyone else. That was before the papparazzi became so ambitious and...

ROBERT BROWN: Real pests.

DIMITRI HADZI: Pests, yes.

ROBERT BROWN: Celebrities had to seclude themselves.

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes, before, no one, well occasionally someone would take a picture but they weren't pursued the way, you know...

ROBERT BROWN: You mentioned about leftism and about leftists at that time. Was that really a predominant thing? Was there a great deal of political talk? Did it affect, quite a bit, your life?

DIMITRI HADZI: Not at all. I was never left and I was always a little suspicious of them anyway (laughs) but alot of the artists were, and still are, I think after the Hungarian revolt -- I think alot of them just dropped out. They were completely disenchanted with communism. But...

ROBERT BROWN: But you really weren't a political person at that time?

DIMITRI HADZI: No.

ROBERT BROWN: You were serious about your study and your...

DIMITRI HADZI: And I think, a very chauvinistic American (laughs). I was not, I think I mentioned this, I was not and never considered myself an expatriate because I knew alot of expatriates who really disliked America. And I didn't dislike it, I mean America gave me everything I had.

ROBERT BROWN: Was Schneider himself an expatriate, more of that type?

DIMITRI HADZI: No he...he just liked living there. I don't think he had any strong feelings about...he wasn't anti-American. He liked it because it was a nice place to live and work. He was getting alot of things done.

ROBERT BROWN: Was he very effective? I mean, would he promote your work?

DIMITRI HADZI: He was, for a while, yes. I don't know, the whole thing, everything changed as the gallery became more prominent he started to rent shows and when you start doing that, then the quality drops.

ROBERT BROWN: Do you mean that shows were sent over or...?

DIMITRI HADZI: No, what I meant by that is that someone could buy an exhibition, you see, instead of just being invited.

ROBERT BROWN: Yes.

DIMITRI HADZI: So then it became really commercial.

ROBERT BROWN: And it was about that time that you were married? Or that you got married? In '54?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. My G.I. bill was just getting...and I was getting thrown out...Everything was happening at once. I was still on the G.I. bill and I was getting thrown out of my studio, and for about a year or so I was seeing this attractive intelligent woman who was on a Fulbright also. But she, she had the Italian Fulbright, I had the Greek Fulbright. She was Martha Leeb, who was an art historian, who had studied at N.Y.U. and got her Ph.D. from Yale. And we got married at the Campidoglio in Rome. A real Italian wedding. And she, being a Fulbright, was living at the American Academy. So I was invited up there. I was the first husband brought up there (laughs). So we lived up there for a couple of years. I had, Roberts -- Laurence Roberts was the director of the American Academy at that time and that was an incredibly exciting time because I didn't have a fellowship. I was moved from one studio to another. So I had about five or six studios there. And Mr. Roberts was very generous and let me stay there. But it was a time when the Roberts had many parties and dinners to meet and mix these various well-known, gifted people with the Fellows. They weren't students, there were Fellows there. I met Marini there -- Marino Marini, Henry Moore, Stravinsky, right down the line, all these giants (laughs).

(End of Side 4).
(Sides 5 and 6 of 8)

DIMITRI HADZI: I think we should talk perhaps about the Schneider Gallery and the Radich Gallery.

ROBERT BROWN: We were last talking about your coming to live at the American Academy in Rome after you were married you got a studio there and what were some of the highlights.

DIMITRI HADZI: Well some of the...besides meeting some of those giants. Working with Walmar Ramish who was from the Rhode Island School of Design. He was working on a huge commission for Philadelphia. So that gave me an opportunity to work on a large scale sculpture.
The other highlight of course, also a turning point in my career, was the meeting of Andrew Ritchie who was at the Museum of Modern Art at the time. And Mr. Roberts suggested he see my work and he did come see it and he seemed to be quite impressed and I thought that was quite nice. But the following morning in the courtyard he asked me if I would be interested in showing for the New Talent Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Of course that was terribly exciting, to be asked that, and of course that led to many other things - the meeting with Stephen Radich and my first show in New York.

ROBERT BROWN: What were you doing then? Were you doing things in wax or small bronzes?

DIMITRI HADZI: It was mostly small bronzes, yes. I think I was just going through a transition between the figurative and the abstract at the time.

ROBERT BROWN: The New Talent Show in 1956, or '55?

DIMITRI HADZI: '56, right.

ROBERT BROWN: It was very important, then. That was your first exposure in America, really.

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes it was and actually, I'm trying to remember which, if (the) Seiferheld show came first or not.

ROBERT BROWN: No, that was a little after, in '59.

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh, that's right. Well the New Talent Show was very exciting for me, being in the Museum of Modern Art and also gave me a chance to see my father, almost for the last time before he died.

ROBERT BROWN: You came over for the show?

DIMITRI HADZI: I came over for the show and I think it was one of my first trips back to America.

ROBERT BROWN: Did you meet some people that became important at that time? Was Ritchie there?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. Not only that but I had, I think, around six or seven pieces and they were all sold out and it was interesting,...was that the collections were quite good. David Rockefeller bought a piece, Mrs. Rockefeller, John D., the third, bought one of the big ones. It was $1000, which was an awful lot of money at that time. So it was enormously successful and while the show was on, one day, I went to Martha Jackson's Gallery - I thought I'd catch up on what was going on in the New York scene. And I was admiring a head of Stravinsky there. A head of Stravinsky by Marini, and it's hard to believe it was only $1500 at that time (laughs). And so I was really studying it and I started talking with a young man at the desk there, and through the conversation I told him I was in the New Talent Show and he came, this young man, and later he told me - I ought to send Stephen Radich over. He's directing the Martha Jackson Gallery and he's interested in sculpture primarily. And Mr. Radich got very interested in the work, but mostly in the centaurs and animals and Greek dancers and whatnot.
He said if I had any other work, he'd be happy to have it in the Martha Jackson Gallery. So that was very exciting, to be in the Martha Jackson Gallery. Nothing very much happened there except that Radich went and left the Jackson Gallery and went with someone else - Butterfield I think his name was. And at that point I got a letter from Martha Jackson saying that Stephen Radich was really interested in my work and that she wasn't really interested in sculpture and she would arrange to put it in storage. Of course I would have to pay the fees. This is all ironic because a number of years later I had a cable from Martha Jackson to meet her in Basel at the fair there and that she would be interested in handling my work. And at that time I was committed to Radich and I said, "It's a wonderful opportunity but I just can't be disloyal." (laughs) Which was probably a mistake! (laughs)

ROBERT BROWN: Radich took to your stuff right away?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes, and then he either bought out or whatever happened with the Butterfield Gallery and it became the Stephen Radich Gallery.

ROBERT BROWN: You had a...back in Rome, you had an exhibition in '58 at the Schneider Gallery, right?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes.

ROBERT BROWN: Was that one of the most prominent galleries there?

DIMITRI HADZI: At that time it certainly was, yes. It was a gallery which this American opened up. He was an ex-professor from Columbia and it was started with the help of Mirko and Calli who guided him and then Schneider went on his own. I just saw him the other day in Rome. He's still going there but of course, but it's not what it used to be. It's not like, the whole climate in Rome isn't what it used to be as far as the art world...

ROBERT BROWN: At that time you were already, you were mainly doing things with classical overtones, with Greek overtones. You said that it was sort of a transitional time for you. Was Ramish, working with him, any influence on you?

DIMITRI HADZI: No. He was very figurative, rather stylized and...but had, as far as the work was concerned, no influence at all. Just an enormous respect for the man and his...that sort of thing.

ROBERT BROWN: In your next, when you had this show at the Schneider Gallery, at that point I think you were involved in doing a monument to Auschwitz. Was that a commission that had come to you?

DIMITRI HADZI: No, that was a competition, which I did not win and it was a turning point in my life and career. Through it I changed from figurative sculpture to abstract sculpture. At the time, I didn't have very much money so I couldn't go to Auschwitz. But the closest place I could go was Dacchau. And I went there and spent three or four day. And I did an awful lot of reading and collecting photographs. It was very difficult to collect photographs at that time because everyone thought it was such awful stuff they just buried it away and threw it out.

ROBERT BROWN: You were attempting to collect those things in Germany?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh everywhere. In Rome too, I went to the AP, UP, and all those places. It was rather difficult to find alot of that stuff. But there was enough material plus the visits to Dacchau and what I realized when I started making this study was that those horrendous photographs with the thousands of bodies piled up - after a while you just didn't see them anymore. The whole thing - they negated each other by numbers. And that led me to do work at my project in a more abstract, to try to retain that same kind of initial punch and drama but to minimize all the thousands of parts, etc., etc.. And just to simplify it and through abstract forms to retain that kind of feeling. And that's where the change happened. Also that brought me back to World War II, we veterans who came out of the war immediately forgot the war. And very often, like most of us, I don't think we knew what was going on during the war. I certainly didn't know. And I got reinterested in World War II. As I was living in Italy, I became interested in the Italian campaign and I got to know some of the campaigns quite well. I was in the Pacific during the war. Which I should...I don't know if I mentioned it.

ROBERT BROWN: Yes, you did mention it.

DIMITRI HADZI: How my career changed?

ROBERT BROWN: During the war, yes. Wherein lay your interests there? The interests of World War II for you at that time? When you were getting to know the Italian campaigns and so forth? Why did you get so much into it?

DIMITRI HADZI: Into it? Well mostly because I'm interested in history and the military. But that led into the whole development of the helmet and shield series. Which became...some rather large pieces came out of it...as a matter of fact, the Helmet, Elmo V, "Elmo" is Italian for helmet - which also suggests the atomic mushroom. That was originally shown at the Radich Gallery and that was purchased by the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirschhorn - both bought a casting of it. And then this Scudi, the shields, that was also purchased by the Hirschhorn - that is the smaller version. The larger version was bought by the Rochester Museum.

ROBERT BROWN: These are, how large are these - life sized?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. About six feet high. Yes six to eight (feet).

ROBERT BROWN: They are very brutal forms.

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes they are very aggressive and the initial ones, the initial models were in the Radich, er...Schneider Exhibition of '58. You see the initial small Elmo, Number 1 and that was purchased, that was in the Museum of Modern Art exhibition. Not the New Talent Show but the one that was...American Sculpture? I forget the name of it now, but that traveled to France and they had the exhibition at the Rodin Museum and it traveled around and that was one of the pieces.

ROBERT BROWN: Did you mean for them to be enlarged, say the over life-sized versions, was that your...?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes, I always with the exception, well I think that had also started with going into the abstract. I'd, the Centaur and Lapith motifs, I guess about the largest of those (were) approximately 39 inches. I never visualized them on a real monumental scale. But once I got into the Helmets and the Shields I saw them on an enormous scale. I would have liked to have seen these even larger as a matter of fact.

ROBERT BROWN: You felt that was necessary to make them seem very brutal and strong?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes. It was also to get under them sort of and to visualize them better.

ROBERT BROWN: Now you, behind all these, in fact throughout your career lay much preparation as in drawings?

DIMITRI HADZI: Drawings, many drawings. Some I believe, one of them I had also done some etchings and engravings. And then, of course, when you see the M.I.T. catalogue I did one for the cover for it. There...Should we talk about the M.I.T. show?

ROBERT BROWN: Well we can, but that comes out a little bit later.

DIMITRI HADZI: Later, yes.

ROBERT BROWN: Now, these drawings, then, what's the purpose of them for you? If you carried them so far as then going into etchings as well they must mean, in themselves, a great deal to you.

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes. First of all, like most artists, I love to draw, but drawing I do, most of the drawings I do are for sculpture studies. And I've always been interested in graphics and one of the reasons for doing graphics is that I don't like to part with my drawings. To this day, I don't like to. I hold on because I see ideas which I've done five years ago and they're still valid. By doing it in an etching or engraving, I can make an edition and I don't feel so badly about people having them (laughs).

ROBERT BROWN: People can have these studies in that way.

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes.

ROBERT BROWN: In your studies, what are you trying to get out of them? What do you suppose you're trying to develop through your drawings?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, as I look back through my early drawings...Many of them which I'd just like to and I have already destroyed...what comes through a drawing and more than anything else is the struggle of trying to arrive at a certain form or searching for forms or trying to put down in two dimensions certain feelings and ideas one has. And in looking through the early drawings and even now I can see that so many of them are bad drawings. I'm not trying to make pretty drawings. I'm trying to search for something. And I can say that now I think I consider myself a very good draftsman, but I can see that the drawings are real...

ROBERT BROWN: But that hadn't been the purpose anyway. The purpose was to work out your ideas for sculpture?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes.

ROBERT BROWN: And you found the drawings an essential way to arrive at the placement of forms of a relative size and shape?

DIMITRI HADZI: Yes.

ROBERT BROWN: What are some of these? Look at this drawing for Scudi II, some of these shapes express, or what do you think you were expressing when you were making those shapes?

DIMITRI HADZI: Well, it's hard to explain what some of those things are but one does see very often, like in the Thermopylae piece for Government Center, I had an idea of what...I was working on it but it only comes from years later of looking at the piece, that you realize that so much of what you've been doing has been subconsciously and alot of things fall into place. Obviously here we have two shield forms, opposing shield forms with very angry shapes pointing at each other. And out of this whole mixture of reasons and feelings, there's also quite phallic...And I guess that shows because usually combat is between males. Going through some of the frescoes in Italy of Raphael and Michelangelo and da Vinci, and all, you see the kinds of scary, frightening men in combat with exposed genitals. It's kind of weird how vulnerable man is. That's one way of really showing it. If the man was completely covered, it would seem that he's protected, but when his genitalia's out there he could be finished in one second. So that's kind of a conscious/sub-conscious element thrown into that. And I think that that comes into this with all these phallic shapes, too. They weren't very conscious at the time. Also this tension - I try to create a tension between these two shield forms.
Now the piece, that in Government Center in Boston. That's a very complex piece. I don't know if you've seen it recently. The theme of the Thermopylae piece is courage, based on Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. And, being of Greek extraction, I thought, well, why not take three battles where great courage was displayed. In Marathon, Salonis and Thermopylae. And, of the series, the Thermopylae series won out. And you can see it's a basic tripodal composition with very busy elements above it. It has a shield form in the front, and it's a quite aggressive piece with these elements going horizontally across. On the other hand, it's also protective so it's got this paradoxical feeling about it - aggressive and yet, being protective.
So as I look back I'm trying to think where did some of these forms and symbols come from? And I suddenly realized one day that this whole element here with the horizontal form looks like a sixth century hoplite, a sixth century warrior with an arm extended. And of course the tripod was an element I'd been playing with, working with in earlier pieces. And of course, it's ceremonial: tripods, Chinese bronzes, the famous tripod at Delphi and I remember one at the Victory of Patea. (There's) all kinds of background...And also the tripod's a very stable element as opposed to a four-legged table. It's stable.

ROBERT BROWN: But the tripod also has those connections with ceremonial or public art.

DIMITRI HADZI: Exactly. With public art, right.

ROBERT BROWN: Well this was, what, in the early seventies, so these forms and concerns stayed with you, did they?

DIMITRI HADZI: Oh yes.

ROBERT BROWN: For some time, or maybe I'm a little...jumping ahead? Not quite