A Life’s Passion

While the art world went through one movement after another -- cubism, surrealism, abstract expressionism, minimalism, pop -- Alexander Kantor's art continued in a realistic vein since he first took up a brush as a youngster.

Now 93, Kantor just kept painting nature the way he sees it. Fifteen of his paintings are on view in "Mother Nature's Wonders" at the West Charleston Library gallery.

Born in a small town outside Budapest, Hungary, in 1913, Kantor became interested in nature as a young boy and began drawing out in the country's forests.

Kantor also would spend time in the yard of his home drawing chickens.

He emigrated with his family to the United States when he was 12. After graduating from public school, his family split up and at 16 he moved to Montreal where he attended the Ecole des Beaux Art School.

His art won several prizes and many of them were displayed in shop windows in Toronto.

To make a living, Kantor worked at the American Thermostat Co. in Montreal. But he continued to paint whenever he had the time. Many of his paintings were displayed in shop windows in Toronto.

"That's what he loved to do," says his daughter, Marilyn Kantor. "When he lost everything he owned through bad investments and gambling on horses, he ended up living in a retirement home in West Palm Beach. But he still had his paintings."

He moved to the United States in 1975 and opened Kantor Art Gallery in Jupiter, Fla., in 1980.

After living in the retirement home for several years in the 1990s, he moved to Las Vegas and lives with his daughter.

Today, Kantor suffers from memory loss, but he continues to sketch.

The first painting he completed, some 70 years ago, was of his Hungarian birthplace, which is on view at the exhibit. It was not painted on location, but like most of his paintings, from memory.

"He always painted from his mind and his heart," Marilyn Kantor says. "He had a wonderful life."

The gallery exhibit includes mostly works set in nature, such as "Morning Light," with a deer in a field surrounded by snow and trees.

"Mother's Yearlings" shows horses in a field and "Twig Pickers" takes as its subject a stand of trees with fall foliage and three people and a dog on a path.

"Amber Creek" shows a stream winding through a snow-filled landscape amid bare trees covered in snow.

Besides landscapes, the exhibit contains still lifes of flowers -- "White Mums," "Yellow Mums," "Bouquet" and "Hybrid Lilacs," among them.

"My paintings are my passion of life and the beauty it offers," Kantor says in an artist's statement.