Michael Robinson's subject matter is the world of plants and animals. His paintings
reveal the deep symbolic, and often hidden,
Relationships, of nature and the cosmos
He uses high resolution telescopes to observe, and paint actual distant celestial
objects, rarely seen by humans, often from a non-terrestrial vantage point!
His paintings reveal the deep symbolic, and often hidden, relationships of nature
and the cosmos.
Born in London and raised in five different countries, Michael is the son of
renowned artist Ione Robinson who trained him in art as a boy.
His art can be found in the collections of Peggy Guggenheim( Guggenheim museum
Venice, New York) Leo Castelli galleries, New York, Smithsonian Institute Washington
D.C. Modern art museum N.Y. and Institute of Contemporary art, London,U.K. J.Walter
Thompson, Readers Digest, William Paley CBS and Van Cleef and Arpels.
He has also sold artwork to private collectors and other artists, such as Pablo
Picasso, and George Braques.
He has been collected by corporate collectors such as Phillip Morris, Peggy
Guggenheim, Robert F. Kennedy, Alexander Calder, Allen Ginsburg, Alberto Giacometti,
David Siqueiros.
He has illustrated for Smithsonian Magazine, (April 1976), Sky and Telescope magazine, (April 1997), Michael studied painting and print-making at Virginia Commonwealth University, and has rendered medical illustrations, for the Medical College, of Virginia Commonwealth University.
He also studied painting at the Arts Students League, in New York City.
MICHAEL ROBINSON, IS THE SON OF IONE ROBINSON WHO WAS A FREEDOM FIGHTER.
Ione Robinson
Michael's mother, Ione Robinson was more than just a great artist. She knew
most of the world's leading artists as personal friends, mahy of which she introduced
to him as a child, such as Picasso, Braques, Matisse, Miro, Breton, DiegoRivera,
Orosco, and too many others to mention here.
She was also a patriot, a freedom fighter, a war correspondent and an intelligence
agent for the O.S.S.
She led a remarkable life, gathering intelligence while posing as a simple artist,
gathering the worlds first aerial-reconnaissance, of Nazi ship movements, and
troop activities.
She witnessed Kristalnacht.
She made a daring flight over Luftwaffe airfields with Luftwaffe Generalfeldmarschall
(Luftwaffe General) Albert Kesselring. and English pilot Sydney Cotton, who
was then posing as a film producer, interested in filming the "glory of
the third Reich."
Ione seduced the general with liquor, and kept him occupied, while Sydney surreptitiously
took photos, with large-format telephoto cameras, secretly hidden in the fuselage
of his souped up Lockheed Electra. Ione went on to work covertly, to protect
atomic bomb secrets during and after the Manhattan project.
Ione was instrumental in saving thousands of Spanish children from annihilation
at the hands of Franco and the Nazi Luftwaffe bombing raids on civilian city
targets. As an American freedom fighter in the Abraham Lincoln Brigades in the
Spanish Civil War, She helped start the genre of "The Art of Bearing Witness."
A Message From Michael Robinson:
I am currently working on a biography of Ione's life which picks up after
her book " A Wall to Paint On" leaves off. It describes her experiences
with the worlds leading artists and politicians including a future president,
and her intimate collaborations, with the Scientists who invented the three
critical inventions, that ultimately helped to win World War II.
If anyone has information on her paintings, or owns some, I am now collecting
and digitizing her images, to create an anthology of her body of work. You may
contact me at michaelrobinsonart@yahoo.com
Ione Robinson was a freedom fighter, artist and intelligence agent for America.
She fought against Franco and the Nazis in the Spanish Civil War, just after painting the murals on the Presidential Palace in Mexico with Diego Rivera in 1936.
(Translated from Spanish)
MADRID. - They came from 50 countries. -35,000 were voluntary - that fought
by the freedom. Its necessity to defend basic principles and to fight the battle
against fascism took to them to thicken the republican rows with its particular
army, the one of the International Brigades. Its action not only was limited
the front but recent historical findings have demonstrated that they realised
important workings of aid especially appointed the Spanish children. Schools
paid to them medical and.Photographies and posters in their majority prove thus
it is more than 400 documents - that conforms the exhibition that today are
to the public in the Circle of Beautiful Arts with the title the reclaimed Internacionales.Imágenes
Brigades.
The sample, coordinated by the journalist of Le Monde - son of Spanish republican
exiled in France Michel Lefebvre and the historian specialized in the civil
war Spanish Remí Skoutelsky, comes from Musée DES You invalidate
of France where he has achieved a great success of public. Both emphasized the
interest that the Spanish civil war provokes in England, France or the United
States which demonstrates its theory that "although it was won, the Republic
has won this war in the battle of the memory".
Unpublished photos
Unpublished photos In Spain, besides unpublished documents coming from bottoms of different countries it appears, for the first time, the work of the Ione American Robinson, personal friend of Modotti Bathtub that Diego Rivera worked with the painter at the Presidential Palace in Mexico.
Creek and of that hundred of photographs of the field of Argelés and children sheltered in Mexico has been conserved.
Moscow has been one of the neuralgic points that more unpublished material
has contributed since it is the unique place where they have out of danger remained
documents that see the light for the first time in 60 years and that escaped
to the pro-Franco massacre, among them, great part of the work of the agency
May, formed by the Souza brothers and of the Castle.
On the occasion of this retrospective one, the Lunwerg publishing house that
Juan Carlos presides over Moon, has published a book with the same name that
reproduces unknown republican images to date. The newness of the exhibition
is based, in words of the French commissioners, stressing that "the civil
war is not only one Spanish question but interests to everybody. We have wanted
to show the force of mass media, mainly, of the photographers".
The sample, that will remain in the Madrilenian Circle until the 21 of September,
covers the arrival with the first volunteers in 1936 - the Battalion of the
Italian Death or the militiamen of the POUM, between which George Orwell- was
until his retirement at the end of the 38 and recovers all the visual aspects
of his stay in Spain: its arrival and recruitment, the battle of Madrid, the
humanitarian work that carried out and the life of the Spaniards of the time
portrayed in its majority by its official photographer the Hungarian Desvo Revai
(Turaï).
Beginning of photo journalism
For Lefebvre and Skoutelsky, "the civil war was the first war of photo
journalism". It is the first cinematographic time that occurs to appointment
photographers, journalists who elaborate news articles and news programmes that
repel in international the public opinion.
The voices of aid of a Republic in danger transferred borders and mobilized
volunteers who were immortalized by the founders of the modern media as Robert
Layer, its German companion Gerda Taro and North American photographer Chim,
pseudonym of David Seymour. Also Spanish photographers Agustí Centelles,
whose work are present he has conserved himself in France mainly, Luis To sweep
del that has reclaimed some pictures of volunteers which they happened through
his study of Albacete between 1936 and 1938 and which they have remained hidden
in Switzerland, London or Brussels and that have been identified thanks to the
scenery.
Many of the set out resources emphasize by their newness as the photo of women
with arms or the one of a lanky Orwell whose head excels of the republican rows
in the Lenin quarter of the POUM in Barcelona. Others were used with propagandistic
aims to promote the republican action in the outside. So the fight of the Spanish
town by its freedom that picks up the work of Robert Layer, acquired recently
by the National Library of Madrid is the case of the book.