Recreation, a nearly one-meter tinplate cabin cruiser produced in Japan between 1948 and 1955, represents the pinnacle of postwar mechanical toy boats—ambitious in scale, meticulously constructed, and clearly intended as a prestige item. Made entirely of painted steel, with a stamped metal deck and applied fittings, the vessel houses a large spring motor still intact inside the hull, originally wound through a side port and geared to drive a stern propeller.

 

At this dramatic size, the Recreation was never a dime-store impulse buy. Large-format tin cruisers were marketed as mechanical yachts, occupying the top tier of the toy departments in America’s better stores. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, these boats typically retailed for $9.95–$19.95, with deluxe versions reaching $24.95–$29.95—a major purchase in that period, roughly equivalent to $120–$350 today. They belonged to a completely different economic category from the small friction or wind-up toys sold for pocket change.

 

Who Bought a Meter-Long Tin Cruiser?

 

A boat like this appealed to a very specific set of buyers:

 

>> Well-off parents or grandparents seeking a dramatic Christmas or birthday showstopper.

 

>> Fathers who were boating enthusiasts, delighted to give a mechanically minded child a “real” boat.

 

>> Adult collectors even then, especially through FAO Schwarz, the go-to toy store of many childhoods and a retailer famous for treating oversized tin toys as decorative art objects.

 

>> Department-store gift buyers looking for a premium, centerpiece toy.

 

>> Occasional hotel or resort gift shops in lakeside or coastal towns.

 

A meter-long cruiser was never bought casually. It was a statement purchase, often displayed prominently before it ever touched water.

 

Fun Factor for Its Original Owner

 

For the child lucky enough to receive one—typically a boy of about 6 to 12—the excitement was enormous. The boat’s theatrical size made it feel almost like a scale model rather than a toy, and the resistance of the big spring motor as it was wound lent a sense of power and responsibility. These cruisers were treated as miniature yachts, not bathtub toys.

 

Launching the vessel on a pond or lake became an event: parents gathered, siblings watched, and the cruiser surged across the water in a brief but thrilling 30–60 second burst. The pleasure lay less in long-distance travel than in the ritual itself—winding, releasing, watching, retrieving, and repeating. Because the boat was expensive and somewhat fragile, the experience mixed awe with a sense of privilege.

 

Condition and Present-Day Value

 

The example seen here is a survivor: bent at the bow and missing some fittings. Yet the survival of the internal spring motor gives it more historical integrity than many surviving large cruisers. In the contemporary market, condition and completeness matter far more than sheer size. While pristine, boxed examples can command four-figure prices, a weathered example like this generally falls within the $250–$450 range.

 

The antique shop’s $1,300 asking price reflects enthusiasm rather than the realities of the tin-toy market. Size impresses—but in vintage tinplate, condition, completeness, and provenance decide the value.

 

This text is a collaboration with ChatGPT.

“Sunsets on the Overhead” (Liverpool)

From and oil painting by Eric Bottomley G R A.

 

Eric Bottomley Prints.

 

Post card: - British Postwar Trams, No. 3 of 8.

4,0 Litre

6 In-line

150 hp

 

Class III : Post War "1945-1965"

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Schulklasse, 1948.

This style of 7V is the postwar model introduced in 1947 and updated from the original 7V of 1937. It could be fitted with a four-cylinder side valve engine but more usually the 30 hp V8 of 3,622cc the same powerful petrol engine as used in the Ford V8 Pilot saloon car.

This particular lorry fitted with a tipping tanker body for carrying liquid concrete is one of half a dozen employed on building sites and most likely not even road registered. Seen on the construction of a vast oil storage depot on the outskirts of London the cheap to buy little Fordsons would at the end of the contract probably have their bodies removed and the chassis sold off.

In the background a long coal train, once a common sight on Britain’s railways before the destruction of the coal indusrty by the Iron Lady, trundles by hauled by a Standard 2.10.0.

 

This painting in oils on a 20”x30” canvas originally made for a transport calendar hangs in the offices of Kelsey Publishing of Cudham in Kent.

 

Please remember this image is protected by copyright law.

 

You may download any image for personal or non-commercial use only.

 

IF YOU LIKE THIS IMAGE PLEASE DO LEAVE A COMMENT.

Class III b : Post-War Closed Cars "The Special Ones"

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Class III a : Post-War Closed Cars "The most elegant ones"

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The Duchess copper deposit was discovered by Jack Kennedy, the son of pioneer pastoralist Alexander Kennedy, in 1897. In 1906 the Hampden-Cloncurry Copper Mines Ltd acquired it and it became the richest producer in the region. By 1912, Hampden-Cloncurry had also gained control of the rich Trekelano copper mine to the south of the smaller Mount Mascotte mines to the north. The ore was railed to Kuridala for processing. However, in 1918 continuing labour shortages, breakdowns, exhaustion of the high-grade oxidised ore, and the drastic postwar drop in copper prices forced the closure of most of the company’s mines including Duchess. At the time, the Duchess copper mine boasted a 100 ton capacity bin. This elaborate structure was the wonder of northwest Queensland at the time and it enabled a full train to be loaded in a relatively short time. Mining activities in the region then almost ceased. The Duchess mine had produced 204 865 t of ore that yielded 25 155t of copper, 76kg of gold and 62kg of silver.

 

The Duchess orebody occurred in a steep west-dipping shear zone that cuts granite and dolerite, which are probably the same age as the Burstall Granite, and mica schist and calc-silicate rocks of the Corella Formation. The lode in the upper levels of the mine consisted of bornite and subordinate chalcocite, malachite, and cuptire in calcite, but at deeper levels chalcopyrite with quartz was dominant. The mine was worked to a depth of 259m. Today only concrete footings of the machinery remain, apart from a small pit and trenches excavated by more recent exploration. Malachite forming veins and fracture coatings in quartz, and some pyrite can be found on the site. Numerous smaller copper mines occur in the vicinity of Duchess but most are very small.

 

The Duchess railway opened on the 21st of October 1912 as a temporary terminus for the Great Western Railway construction project. The Hampden Co pressured for the early completion of the line to Duchess to reach its copper mine situated near the station. Ore was forwarded on the 10th of June 1912 as soon as the rails reached Duchess, several months before all the bridging and ballasting was completely finished, such was the urgency.

 

When the railway arrived in 1912 a small town sprung up on both sides of the station. Amenity comprised a hotel, store, butcher, school, police station, and a post office. There was a local activity as shown by passenger traffic levels at around 4000 annual journeys. Distant travellers were catered for by the connecting road coach services. A weekly coach ran from here to Camooweal via Colton Hills (320km), taking in mines and pastoral stations on the way. The service departed Duchess on Thursday at 0800am and arrived at Camooweal by 1800pm. Another coach service ran to Trekelano mine twice a week on a day return.

 

At first there was no water infrastructure required here, locos apparently running to and from Duchess ex Malbon without filing tender tanks. However when the Trekelano tramway opened in 1917 the locos were required to haul a water gin owing to the extra distance involved. In 1918 the manager of the Duchess mine offered Queensland Rail (QR) access to a mine well and this was availed of. QR erected a 30 000 gallon tank for loco water. After the mines closed QR was able to tape the shafts of several mines in turn to maintain supply, which water was suitable after softening.

 

Rail passenger figures remained firm for a few years by dipped after 1921 and settled at around 1200 annually until the late 1950s when they increased to the mid-1960s, probably due to workers from the Mount Isa Line rehabilitation project. A sharp decline then ensued, and numbers dwindled to a couple of hundreds per year.

 

The downturn in smelting saw Duchess ore loadings terminate abruptly at the end of 1920. The Hampden Co closed the Duchess mine in 1921 and the site was not revived until 1926 when the dumps were able to be sold for smelting. QR repaired the long unsued siding to allow safe access and over the next 18 months the dumps were completely removed. The Hampden Co has no further use for the mine (its workings completely flooded by then) and none for the rail connection so it sold the siding to QR in 1928. The mine plant and the rail weighbridge were removed at the same time. Penny packets of ore continued to be sent away throughout the 1930s by district gougers and tributers, presumably loaded at the mine siding.

 

The copper ore and limestone traffic revived in the earnest for Mount Isa Mines from the late 1940s and a few thousand tons annually were loaded at Duchess for a while and again in the mid-1960s at around 10 000 annual tons. No copper ore or limestone was loaded after 1970. The largest single burst ore traffic came from the Phosphate Hill mine in 1975 and 1976 when phosphatic rock to the order of 176 000 tons was road trucked to rail at Duchess pending completion of the Flynn to Phosphate Hill railway and associated loaders at the mine.

 

The station lost its status as a terminus when the line was continued to Butru in 1915 but the place came into its own when the Mount Isa mining filed was discovered and subsequently developed. Traffic for Mount Isa went through Duchess as it was the closest railhead. The railway extension to Mount Isa officially opened on the 17th of May 1929 and Duchess became the junction to Dajarra and Mount Isa from this time. The yard was expanded, and a full suite of signals was installed. The station was protected from three directions (Mount Isa, Dajarra, and Cloncurry) by distant and home signals all worked from a six lever frame near the station office.

 

Some sidings were re-arranged to a new layout. The goods shed road was lifted at one end and relaid around the Mount Isa curve where a new loading bank was installed. The passing loop was extended at the Dajarra end to run beyond the Mount Isa turn out. A refreshment room was established in 1929 when the new line opened and it catered for passengers on the Mail plus the mixed trains and those transferring to and from the Dajarra service. The rooms remained in business until 1938 and benefited from the Dajarra service being worked from Mount Isa for a period in the 1930s.

 

Additional staff and their accommodations were placed at Duchess from 1929, including track gangs and train crews. The train crews were necessary to do away with the need for Cloncurry crews to run the full distance to Mount Isa on overnight rest.

 

The mine siding remained in place until around 1950 when it was lifted and an alternative ore loading ramp provided between the legs of the angle that was served by a new length of siding. The rehabilitation project of 1961 – 1962 saw the crossing loop extended at the Cloncurry end and the Up home signal moved further out.

 

The place generated enough traffic to justify the appointment of a station master, particularly when the copper boom lasted. However, when ore traffic ceased in 1921 the place was immediately downgraded to a gate. Developments from Mount Isa from 1924 onwards saw the station master position returned in 1928 when construction of the extension was underway and Duchess becoming a junction station. Fettling gangs were placed at Duchess to maintain the track in three directions.

 

The station master position lasted until 1972 when replaced by Porter-in-Charge under gate conditions but the building and opening of the Phosphate Hill branch and a rise in ore traffic caused the position to be reinstated in 1975. Changed in train running and safe working led to the final demise of the station master office in 1988 and the place was unattended from the 30th of September that year. The introduction of mechanised gangs from 1966 led to the gradual attrition of the fettling gangs and track inspectors and from a high point of 20 or so staff and a dozen departmental residences the Duchess staffing establishment dwindled to nothing by the late 1990s.

 

In 1988 Train Order Working was implemented here and yard rationalisation was initiated in instalments from this time through to 2004. Removed during this phase were the goods shed, water softener, ore loading siding, goods shed sign and loading bank, the western leg of the angle and, a little later, the eastern leg plus the Dajarra line stub and loop continuation at that end of the yard. The loco water tank was retained as the basis for the town water supply after being lifted from its stand and mountain at ground level. The wooden station office (a 1949 replacement to the original which was destroyed by fire) was demolished in 2006. Its substitute is a new high level, short length, passenger platform and rudimentary shelter.

 

The Duchess township slowly diminished in concert with the railway attrition and by 2007 was down to a few houses, the hotel, and the corrugated iron public hall (with children’s playground intact). The opening of the Trekelano mine and associated camp 14km out of town in 2005, with the access road junctioning at Duchess, gave the hotel a welcome injection of custom.

 

Source: Rocks and Landscapes of Northwest Queensland by Laurie Hutton and Ian Withnall, Copper in the Curry by Norman Houghton.

Title inspired by the great dry wit of Javier Mayoral.

6.277 cc

V8

325 hp

 

Class IV : Post-War "1965-1985"

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Austin 3-litre 1969. Pictured at the Birmingham Bull Ring shopping centre at night.

 

Collection: Longbridge

Date: 1969

Reference Number: CC005093

 

To enquire about any of our images or for more information, please contact photo@britishmotormuseum.co.uk or visit our photographic website at www.motorgraphs.com/.

BC Vintage Truck Museum - Cloverdale

 

This hidden gem in Cloverdale is home to one of the largest collections of vintage trucks in Canada.

  

This postwar pickup from International Harvester was built for durability and utility, but it didn’t skimp on style either.

 

🔧 Key Specs

• Engine: 220.5 cu in (3.6 L) Silver Diamond inline-six

• Horsepower: 85–93 hp

• Torque: 160–170 lb-ft

• Transmission: 3-speed manual, rear-wheel drive

 

️ Design & Features

• Rounded fenders and a bold grille gave it a rugged yet approachable look

• Wood-lined bed floors and body-color steel wheels were common on restored models

• Optional features included electric wipers, a radio, and even a clock

 

📈 Collector Appeal

• Restored examples have sold for anywhere from $9,700 to $38,000 depending on condition

 

• Known for its reliability and simplicity, it’s a favorite among classic truck enthusiasts...

  

Thank you for your visit and any faves or comments are always greatly appreciated!

 

~Sonja

Somos Bokeh Photography n Design, expertos en Fotografía y Diseño: Fotoestudios, Reportajes Fotográficos, Fotografía Publicitaria, Diseño de Publicidad

 

Website: bokehphotography.com.co

Facebook: Bokeh Photography n Design Facebook Page

 

Cel 3205144403

Cali -Colombia

The postwar Studebaker was in its third model year in 1949. The 5-seat coupes were renamed as the Starlight series with a 3-seat business utility variation also available. The Champion had the 169.6 cubic inch six with 80 HP.

 

15,746 Champion Starlight Coupes (5-seat) coupes were built in the 1949 model year, with 5,917 in Deluxe trim and 9,823 as Regal Deluxe trim at $1,683 and $1,757 respectively (FOB South Bend, Hamilton or Los Angeles).

  

2014 Gore Aussie Muscle Mania Car Show (12-4-14)

 

Celebrating the 350 part #1: Chevrolet 350 V8

 

THE POWERPLANT (Part 1 of 2)

 

One of the great paradoxes of automotive history is that while the Ford Motor Company was the first mass manufacturer to produce affordable V8-powered cars, it is the Chevrolet small-block V8 that has gone on to become the most famous and loved of all eight-cylinder engines.

 

In naming the 10 best engines in history, Ward’s AutoWorld found a place for the Ford side-valve flathead V8 but the only postwar V8 from Detroit to get a spot was the Chevrolet 350 cubic-inch unit.

 

The postwar boom in the US created a huge proliferation of new models and, by the mid-1960s, what became known as the horsepower race. In our current era where the same basic engine might be found in Peugeots, Citroëns and the Australian Ford Territory, it is difficult to grasp the fact that General Motors was so rich that most of its divisions had a unique range of V8s and in multiple variants.

 

When the Chevrolet Division introduced the 350ci V8, Buick had a 340 (as well as its 300, 400 and 430), Oldsmobile had a 330 (plus its own 400 and a 425), Chevy’s closest sibling Pontiac had a 326 (and yet another 400 and its 428) while GM’s flagship brand Cadillac had a solitary 429.

 

None of these engines could match the production life of the Chevy 350 which made its debut in the 1967 Camaro 350SS, tasked with the challenge of stealing sales from the phenomenally successful Mustang.

 

Although replaced by the Generation II LT and Generation III LS engines in the 1990s, it was not discontinued until 2003. And it remains in production in Mexico as a crate unit for Chevrolet Performance.

 

To understand the significance of the 350 it is necessary to look at the history of Chevy’s small-block V8.

 

High-compression V8 engines had been a key element in GM’s postwar plan. Alfred P. Sloan Jr, who effectively ran the corporation from 1923 (as President) to 1956 when he finally retired as Chairman of the Board, wrote in My Years with General Motors: “At the close of World War II we made the projection that for an indefinite period the principal attractions of the product would be appearance, automatic transmissions and high-compression engines, in that order; and that has been the case.”

 

While Cadillac had always been GM’s top brand, Oldsmobile was usually the one where new engineering was first applied. So it made sense for the high-compression V8 engines to make their 1948 debut in both marques for model year 1949. The chief designer of the Cadillac engine was Ed Cole (see below).

 

In 1952 Cole was transferred to Chevrolet Division where the engineers were already at work on a new high-compression V8 intended for the Corvette. The view at the time was that without a powerful V8 engine the model would have to be discontinued as the ‘stove-bolt’ 165hp straight-six gave the wrong message for the corporation’s only dedicated sports car.

 

Apparently Cole didn’t like what he saw and he told the team to begin from a clean sheet of paper to design an engine that would be more efficient, easier to manufacture and less bulky. Thus his experience at Cadillac at the top of the GM hierarchy was transferred to humble Chevrolet at the bottom.

 

R.F. Sanders, chief passenger car chassis engineer at Chevrolet, presented a paper at the Society of Automotive Engineers Golden Anniversary Annual Meeting on 12 January, 1955. His subject was ‘The New Chevrolet V-8 Engine’. “Anything we could slice off the top or bottom of the block, or from the bores, would mean less heavy iron and less water required to cool it. This was one of our prime objectives – to make that basic block just as compact and light in weight as possible.’ At 531 pounds (241kg), it was 41 pounds (18kg) lighter than the in-line six it so comprehensively superseded.”

 

While rival manufacturers required up to 22 casting cores, Chevrolet used just 12. Rather than conventional heavy and complex rocker arm shafts, Chevy’s small block got stamped steel rocker arms on individual studs. This innovative valvetrain design was key to the engine’s high rpm performance. High turbulence, wedge-type combustion chambers (where only the valve seats needed machining) minimised octane demand.

 

Rotating and reciprocating components were balanced individually. A forged steel crankshaft was used. Connecting rods were tested to 18 million cycles without failure. The interchangeable cylinder heads were of cross-flow port design and the head bolts were arranged pentagonally to spread stresses more evenly.

 

‘Interchangeable’ went on to become a key adjective for the small block. It is possible to fit worked 350 cylinder heads onto a stock 1955 265. The one-piece intake manifold combined the water outlet, oil filter, the lifter valley cover, distributor mounting and exhaust heat riser in a single casting.

 

In its original 265ci guise the small block developed 162hp. With the optional ‘Power Pack’ comprising a four-barrel Rochester and dual exhausts, output was 180hp, which was more than respectable in 1955.

 

The 265 was bored from 3.75 inches to 3.875 to create the 283 for 1957. Then for the 327 in 1962, it was bored again to 4.00 inches and stroked from the original 3.00 inches to 3.25. At 4.00 X 3.25 this was a notably oversquare design.

 

Then for model year 1967 Chevrolet introduced the 350 with a new crankshaft and a stroke of 3.48. The first version was known as the L-48. It promised buyers of the all-new Chevrolet Camaro SS350 295bhp and 380ft/lb of torque.

 

The L-48 soon became optional on a huge variety of Chevrolets, including Impalas, El Camino utes and Chevelles. It had cast pistons and a compression ratio of 10.25:1. For 1968 it was offered as optional equipment in the Chevy II Nova as the main element in the $211 Super Sport option on two-door models.

 

Although the 350 was developed from the 327 and would eventually replace it, it didn’t find its way under the bonnet of the Corvette until 1969. Which was also the year Colin Bond won Bathurst in a so-proudly-Australian Holden Monaro GTS 350.

 

The L-48 became the entry-level ’Vette engine, superseding the previous model’s 300hp edition of the 327. This peak output was unchanged but Corvette buyers could specify the optional L-46 with 350hp for $132 extra. And then there were the big blocks with the 427 offering as much as 435hp by 1967.

 

For 1970, the 350 became the standard V8 for all full-size Chevrolets, which now included a large coupe in the Ford Thunderbird ‘personal’ idiom. The Monte Carlo undercut its Ford rival by some $1250, or roughly 30 percent. The 350 made just 250hp but Monte Carlo buyers looking for more grunt could tick the SS-454 option box to acquire the ‘Super Sport’ package which included a 360hp big-block 454 V8.

 

Within its first three years the 350 small block was offered in several levels of tune, the highest of which was the LT-1. Introduced in 1970, it was available in the Corvette (ZR-1) and Camaro (Z28). At 370hp, it had almost 50 percent more power than the the 350 in the Monte Carlo. The LT-1 boasted solid lifters, a revised camshaft, a four-barrel 780 CFM Holley on an aluminium intake manifold and 11:1 compression ratio.

 

The 350 was not the only small-block V8 available in Chevrolet’s Mustang-rival. 1967 became a huge year for the already famous small-block V8. A unique 302ci (4.9-litre) unit was created to make the Camaro Z28 eligible for the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Trans-Am series. For 1967-69 capacity was limited to 5.0 litres.

 

This remarkable new engine showcased Chevrolet’s small-block V8 technology. The three-inch crankshaft from the 283 was fitted to a four-inch bore 327 block. With such a short stroke it loved to rev. A 780cfm four-barrel Holley was fitted. Compression was 11:1. The following year the 780 was swapped for a pair of 600s on an aluminium intake manifold and a different camshaft.

 

Larger journals were fitted to support the new hardened forged crankshaft. For 1969 the factory admitted to 290hp beneath the newly fitted Corvette finned aluminium valve covers, but 375 was nearer the truth.

 

It is improbable that either Ed Cole or R.F. Sanders could have guessed at the beginning of the small block program that by 1968 their baby would be the dominant engine in American Formula 5000 open-wheeler racing. These cars weighed 1400 pounds, produced up to 550hp running through a five-speed magnesium transaxle. Despite the inclusion of such advanced features as mechanical fuel injection, a magnesium induction system, a roller-lifter camshaft and roller rockers, the 302 retained an almost stock crankshaft.

 

What a contrast with the fate of the 350 LT-1 as clean air demands outranked the cry for ever increasing power. It fell from a 370hp (SAE) rating in the 1970 Corvette to 255hp (SAE net, meaning installed in the car and running the ancillaries) by 1972.From 1973 to 1980 the L82 was the hottest 350 with forged pistons, a compression ratio of 9.0:1 and 250bhp (SAE net) in the first of these years dropping to 230 by 1980.

 

Then in 1981 came the L81 and the ’Vette was humbled to 190hp. The 1982 L83 was available only with an automatic transmission and claimed a further 10 horsepower.

 

For 1984 there was a new Corvette. Its L83 was equipped with throttle-body injection. Power crept up to 205hp.

 

From 1985 to 1992 the L98 350 with tuned port injection saw bigger performance gains with horsepower ratings from 230 up to 250. This engine was available in the Camaro and its kissin’ cousin Pontiac Firebird from 1987 to 1992. A roller camshaft was fitted from 1987.

 

By the 1990s the triumph of the Chevrolet small block over other similar capacity GM V8s was complete and the L05 350 was used in the 1992-93 Buick Roadmaster, the Cadillac Fleetwood and Brougham (where it was an option) and was optional in the 1992 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser wagon.

 

The Gen II arrived in the ’92 Corvette and was named LT1 (no hyphen) as a tribute to the original LT-1. It wasn’t by any means all-new, retaining the classic bore and stroke dimensions of 4.00 X 3.84 inches. Interchangeability remained a key criterion. The rotating assembly of the Gen II fits many of the older engines, but the block and heads were new. The reverse-flow cooling system favoured the combustion chambers reducing the risk of detonation now the compression ratio was back to 10.4:1.

 

Cast-iron heads were used on the mainstream Chevrolet Impala and Caprice while the Corvette and Camaro/Firebird scored aluminium. Welcome was multi-port fuel injection. Maximum power was 330hp in the LT4 (1996-97 Grand Sport Corvette, Collector Edition Corvette and all ’96 manual Corvettes).

 

The Gen III of 1997 was a big departure. It had an aluminium block when used in cars while trucks made do with cast iron. The capacity was still 5.7 litres but the bore was 3.898 inches and the stroke 3.62. The premium LS1 version was used in the ’Vette from 1997 and the Camaro/Firebird from 1998. In LS1 guise the Gen III was offered in the VT Commodore, Statesman, Caprice and HSV range from 1999 to 2005 and was continually refined.

 

The Gen IV was based on its predecessor but boasted capacity of up to 7.0 litres. Holdens use the 6.0-litre L76 (270kW) while HSVs get the hot LS2 of 6.2 litres and with maximum power outputs of 317kW and 325kW.

 

On 30 November, 2012 the 100 millionth small-block Chevrolet V8 emerged from the production line. Enough said.

 

Old King Cole:

 

The man behind the machine...

 

EdwardD N. Cole died in his own aeroplane on 30 October, 1967. There are many things he is remembered for but some are more celebrated than others.

 

Born on 17 September 1909, Cole enrolled at the General Motors Institute (GMI) at Flint, Michigan in 1930 under Cadillac sponsorship.

 

At Cadillac he rose through several positions to become chief design engineer for US Army combat vehicles. That was in 1943. Three years later he was chief engineer at Cadillac and he was responsible for the high-compression, short-stroke Cadillac V8 that was slipped beneath the bonnet of the 1949 model.

 

In 1952 he became chief engineer at Chevrolet and one of his first jobs was to tell the team working on the forthcoming V8 engine to rethink the design. And, no, he did not just ask for a smaller version of the Caddy engine because several years had elapsed and he always wanted the newest and smartest.

 

In July 1956 Ed Cole was named general manager of Chevrolet and made a vice president of GM.

 

It was Ed Cole who insisted Chevrolet’s compact car, the Corvair, have an air-cooled rear-mounted engine. He also launched the car in the knowledge that it was much too easy to roll, siding with the accountants over the engineers.

 

In November 1961 he was promoted again to the Board and put in charge of the car and truck divisions. Next, in July 1965, he became executive vice president en route to the top job.

 

In 1970 he instructed GM engineers to lower compression ratios (see main story) and design engines that could run on unleaded petrol. When he retired in 1974 he held 18 patents, the most significant of which was the catalytic converter.

 

(Story courtesy of Unique Cars Magazine. Ref: www.uniquecarsmag.com.au/news-and-reviews/article/article...)

  

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich

 

Munich (German: München; Austro-Bavarian: Minga; Polish: Monachium) is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, the second most populous German federal state. With a population of around 1.5 million, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg, as well as the 12th-largest city in the European Union. The city's metropolitan region is home to 6 million people. Straddling the banks of the River Isar (a tributary of the Danube) north of the Bavarian Alps, it is the seat of the Bavarian administrative region of Upper Bavaria, while being the most densely populated municipality in Germany (4,500 people per km²). Munich is the second-largest city in the Bavarian dialect area, after the Austrian capital of Vienna.

 

The city is a major centre of art, technology, finance, publishing, culture, innovation, education, business, and tourism in Germany and Europe and enjoys a very high standard and quality of living, reaching first in Germany and third worldwide according to the 2018 Mercer survey, and being rated the world's most liveable city by the Monocle's Quality of Life Survey 2018. According to the Globalization and World Rankings Research Institute Munich is considered an alpha-world city, as of 2015.

 

The name of the city is derived from the Old/Middle High German term Munichen, meaning "by the monks". It derives from the monks of the Benedictine order, who ran a monastery at the place that was later to become the Old Town of Munich; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat of arms. Munich was first mentioned in 1158. Catholic Munich strongly resisted the Reformation and was a political point of divergence during the resulting Thirty Years' War, but remained physically untouched despite an occupation by the Protestant Swedes. Once Bavaria was established as a sovereign kingdom in 1806, it became a major European centre of arts, architecture, culture and science. In 1918, during the German Revolution, the ruling house of Wittelsbach, which had governed Bavaria since 1180, was forced to abdicate in Munich and a short-lived socialist republic was declared.

 

In the 1920s, Munich became home to several political factions, among them the NSDAP. The first attempt of the Nazi movement to take over the German government in 1923 with the Beer Hall Putsch was stopped by the Bavarian police in Munich with gunfire. After the Nazis' rise to power, Munich was declared their "Capital of the Movement". During World War II, Munich was heavily bombed and more than 50% of the entire city and up to 90% of the historic centre were destroyed. After the end of postwar American occupation in 1949, there was a great increase in population and economic power during the years of Wirtschaftswunder, or "economic miracle". Unlike many other German cities which were heavily bombed, Munich restored most of its traditional cityscape and hosted the 1972 Summer Olympics. The 1980s brought strong economic growth, high-tech industries and scientific institutions, and population growth. The city is home to major corporations like BMW, Siemens, MAN, Linde, Allianz and MunichRE.

 

Munich is home to many universities, museums and theatres. Its numerous architectural attractions, sports events, exhibitions and its annual Oktoberfest attract considerable tourism. Munich is one of the most prosperous and fastest growing cities in Germany. It is a top-ranked destination for migration and expatriate location. Munich hosts more than 530,000 people of foreign background, making up 37.7% of its population.

 

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Town_Hall_(Munich)

 

The New Town Hall (German: Neues Rathaus; Central Bavarian: Neis Rathaus) is a town hall at the northern part of Marienplatz in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It hosts the city government including the city council, offices of the mayors and a small portion part of the administration. In 1874 the municipality had left the Old Town Hall for its new domicile.

Busy traffic at the Black Cat. 1/76 scale model.

The Museum of the Dreamers

The Phantastenmuseum is a museum in the Palais Palffy in the 1st district of Vienna Inner City. It shows the evolution of fantastic, surreal and visionary art of the postwar period to the present.

History

Following discussions between the Austrian artist Ernst Fuchs (* 13. Februar 1930 in Wien; † 9. November 2015) and the publisher, organizer and author Gerhard Habarta the idea of a museum of fantastic art in Vienna came to the realization. The "Austrian Cultural Center since 1958" in the Palais Palffy was enthusiastic about the idea, the plans for the new museum were concretised in the year of 2010. In autumn 2010 was started with the adaptation of the premises, which was completed in January 2011. The opening of the museum took place under the patronage of Federal President Heinz Fischer on 15 January 2011.

Premises

For the museum parts of the historical Palais Palffy due to war damage in the 1950s renovated were used.

The foyer was designed by Lehmden student Kurt Welther about The Marriage of Figaro. Here, also a lobby with the ticket office, the information and the museum shop has been set up. In this one gifts like replicas of famous works of art, sculptures, jewelery, catalogs and posters as well as original editions are sold. On the 1st floor is located opposite the Figaro Concert Hall the gallery. It is a 150 m² large space for solo exhibitions. The museum occupies the entire top floor and consists of designed spaces. In addition to works from its own collection and permanent loans, documents and portraits of artist personalities are shown.

The museum

The museum is divided into the following areas:

Impulses: Here are the inspirations identified which brought the young artists first information after the war, with works by Edgar Jené and Gustav K. Beck and Arnulf Neuwirth.

Academy: Here, the young creatives found an artistic home, including works by Albert Paris Gütersloh, Ernst Fuchs, Fritz Janschka, Anton Lehmden and Kurt Steinwendner before he turned into the filmmaker and object artist Curt Stenvert.

Contemporaries: These include older artists of fantastic, who had survived the dictatorship, like Greta Freist, Kurt Goebel, Charles Lipka or the CIA agent Charles von Ripper. And the young ones, as Rudolf Schoenwald or Arnulf Rainer as well as painters who moved in later Art Club. These include the "partisan" Maria Biljan-Bilger, Peppino Wieternik before he turned to the abstract, and Carl Unger who designed a large glass front of the Palais Palffy.

Art Club: It gathered the artistic elite of the post-war period and became with the Strohkoffer (straw suitcase) a social center.

Dog Group: It became the first counter-movement, in which the rebels as Ernst Fuchs, Arnulf Rainer and Maria Lassnig, Wolfgang Kudrnofsky and maverick visionary Anton Krejcar with graphics that today have become valuable manifested themselves.

The Pintorarium of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Ernst Fuchs and Arnulf Rainer fought actionistically with wall newspaper and nude demonstration against the established Academy, bad architecture and for the freedom of the spirit.

Hundertwasser realized the theories of Pintorarium in his buildings. A photo documentation of Kurt Pultar.

Vienna School of Fantastic Realism: The core of the museum with pictures of Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hutter, Fritz Janschka, who lives in the United States and Anton Lehmden. Of Rudolf Hausner is - in addition to an oil painting - the documentation of long-term work on his Ark of Odysseus to see. In addition to an early work by Ernst Fuchs, a specially created for the museum great painting version of a 55 years ago arosen drawing is shown.

In the department of simultaneous 16 images of that Viennese Fantasts can be seen who presented themselves in the 1960s for the first time, among other things, in the gallery that installed Ernst Fuchs.

In the Department Next Generation are those almost still "young ones" which - despite temporary exclusion by the avant-garde - are committed to the new tendencies of the fantastic. They studied partly with Hausner, Lehmden, Hutter and Fuchs and also learned as wizards.

The Graphic Cabinet presents some etchings and lithographs to stamps. Here the global network is shown in about 30 works by international visionaries. Representatives from Japan, the US, Australia and European centers are the ambassadors of associations of fantastic artists, the Ambassadors of the Fantastic Universe.

 

Phantastenmuseum

Das Phantastenmuseum ist ein Museum im Palais Pálffy im 1. Wiener Gemeindebezirk Innere Stadt. Es zeigt die Entwicklung der phantastischen, surrealen und visionären Kunst von der Nachkriegszeit bis zur Gegenwart.

Geschichte

Nach Gesprächen zwischen dem österreichischen Künstler Ernst Fuchs und dem Verleger, Organisator und Autor Gerhard Habarta entstand die Idee zur Verwirklichung eines Museums für phantastische Kunst in Wien. Das „Österreichische Kulturzentrum seit 1958“ im Palais Pálffy zeigte sich von der Idee begeistert, die Pläne für das neue Museum wurden im Jahr 2010 konkretisiert. Im Herbst 2010 wurde mit der Adaptierung der Räumlichkeiten begonnen, die im Jänner 2011 abgeschlossen wurde. Die Eröffnung des Museums fand am 15. Jänner 2011 unter dem Ehrenschutz von Bundespräsident Heinz Fischer statt.

Räumlichkeiten

Für das Museum wurden Teile des historischen, aufgrund Kriegsschäden in den 1950er Jahren renovierten Palais Pálffy genutzt.

Das Foyer wurde vom Lehmden-Schüler Kurt Welther zum Thema Figaros Hochzeit gestaltet. Hier wurde auch ein Empfangsbereich mit der Ticketkasse, der Information und dem Museums-Shop eingerichtet. In diesem werden Geschenke wie Nachbildungen berühmter Kunstwerke, Skulpturen, Schmuck, Kataloge und Kunstdrucke sowie auch Original-Editionen verkauft. Im 1. Stock befindet sich gegenüber dem Figaro-Konzertsaal die Galerie. Es handelt sich um einen 150 m² großen Raum für Einzelausstellungen. Das Museum nimmt das gesamte Obergeschoss ein und besteht aus gestalteten Räumen. Neben den Werken aus eigenem Bestand und Dauerleihgaben werden Dokumente und Porträts der Künstlerpersönlichkeiten gezeigt.

Das Museum

Das Museum ist in folgende Bereiche gegliedert:

Impulse: Hier werden die Impulse aufgezeigt, die den jungen Künstlern erste Informationen nach dem Krieg brachten, mit Werken von Edgar Jené und Gustav K. Beck und Arnulf Neuwirth.

Akademie: Hier fanden die jungen Kreativen eine künstlerische Heimat, mit Werken von Albert Paris Gütersloh, Ernst Fuchs, Fritz Janschka, Anton Lehmden und Kurt Steinwendner, bevor er zum Filmemacher und Objektkünstler Curt Stenvert wurde.

Zeitgenossen: Dazu zählen ältere Künstler des Phantastischen, die die Diktatur überlebt hatten, wie Greta Freist, Kurt Goebel, Charles Lipka oder der CIA-Agent Charles von Ripper. Und die Jungen, wie Rudolf Schönwald oder Arnulf Rainer sowie Maler die sich im späteren Art Club bewegten. Dazu gehören die „Partisanin“ Maria Biljan-Bilger, Peppino Wieternik, bevor er sich zum Abstrakten wandte, und Carl Unger der für das Palais Pálffy eine große Glasfront gestaltete.

Art Club: Er versammelte die künstlerische Elite der Nachkriegszeit und wurde mit dem Strohkoffer ein geselliges Zentrum.

Hundsgruppe: Sie wurde zur ersten Gegenbewegung, in der sich die Aufrührer wie Ernst Fuchs, Arnulf Rainer und Maria Lassnig, Wolfgang Kudrnofsky und der Außenseiter-Phantast Anton Krejcar mit heute wertvoll gewordenen Grafiken manifestierten.

Das Pintorarium von Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Ernst Fuchs und Arnulf Rainer kämpfte aktionistisch mit Wandzeitung und Nacktdemonstration gegen die etablierte Akademie, schlechte Architektur und für die Freiheit des Geistes.

Hundertwasser verwirklichte die Theorien des Pintorariums in seinen Bauten. Eine Fotodokumentation von Kurt Pultar.

Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus: Der Kern des Museums mit Bildern von Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hutter, dem in den USA lebenden Fritz Janschka und von Anton Lehmden. Von Rudolf Hausner ist - neben einem Ölbild - die Dokumentation der langjährigen Arbeit an seiner Arche des Odysseus zu sehen. Neben einem Frühwerk von Ernst Fuchs ist auch eine eigens für das Museum geschaffene große Gemälde-Fassung einer vor 55 Jahren entstandenen Zeichnung ausgestellt.

In der Abteilung der Gleichzeitigen sind 16 Bilder jener Wiener Fantasten zu sehen, die sich in den 1960er-Jahren zum ersten Mal präsentierten, u.a. in der Galerie, die Ernst Fuchs installierte.

In der Abteilung Next Generation sind jene fast „noch Jungen“, die sich – trotz zeitweiliger Ausgrenzung durch die Avantgarde – neuen Tendenzen des Phantastischen verpflichtet fühlen. Sie haben zum Teil bei Hausner, Lehmden, Hutter und Fuchs studiert und auch als Assistenten gelernt.

Das Graphische Kabinett stellt einige Radierungen und Lithographien bis hin zu Briefmarken aus. Hier wird in etwa 30 Werken internationaler Phantasten die weltweite Vernetzung gezeigt. Vertreter aus Japan, den USA, Australien und europäischen Zentren sind die Botschafter von Vereinigungen phantastischer Künstler, den Ambassadors of the Fantastic Universe.

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantastenmuseum

"Gruen and Lucille Apartment House"

unknown location

The range of the B-29 Superfortress immediately interested Boeing in developing a passenger version for postwar use; this would make transatlantic and Hawaii flying routes economical for the first time. Since the standard B-29 fuselage would be inadequate for passengers, Boeing designers added a larger-diameter fuselage atop the old B-29 fuselage, resulting in a “double-bubble” appearance. The tail and engines of the B-50 advanced version of the Superfortress were adapted to what would become the Model 377 Stratocruiser. While only 55 Model 377s entered airline service, quickly eclipsed by the jet age, they were considered luxurious for their time, with the lower deck being used for airborne lounges or sleeping compartments, all in pressurized comfort—a first for the airline industry.

 

The USAF developed the C-97 Stratofrieghter version of the Model 377 at the same time, which differed from the airliner version by being used for cargo missions, with undernose weather radar and clamshell doors in the rear fuselage. The C-97 arrived just too late for the Berlin Airlift, but was used extensively in Korea. Like the Stratocruiser, only 60 dedicated C-97 transports were built: by the time the aircraft reached the USAF in numbers, the Lockheed C-130 Hercules was already in development.

 

Where the Stratofreighter would truly shine was as an airborne tanker: over 800 KC-97s would be built as the first purpose-built airborne tankers in the world. The clamshell doors were deleted, though cargo capacity was retained on the upper deck, giving the KC-97 a dual role. Fuel tanks were added to the lower deck, along with a station for the Boeing flying boom attached to the rear fuselage. The aircraft had to have separate fuel systems, as the KC-97 used piston engines and the jets it refueled would need a different type. The use of piston engines was to prove problematic for the KC-97 as well: by the time it entered service in 1950, it was far slower than the jets it would need to refuel. The complicated Wasp Major engines were also difficult to maintain, notorious for spraying oil at startup, and prone to catastrophic fires. At least two KC-97s were lost to engine explosions, something that had plagued the Model 377 as well. As the B-50 was retired in the early 1960s, J47 jet engines were removed and attached to Stratofreighters as the KC-97L variant.

 

The KC-97 could still be called a success, despite all of its problems and the fact that technology threatened to render it obsolete as soon as it entered service. Replaced in frontline service by the KC-135 Stratotanker, the KC-97 was relegated to Air Reserve and Air National Guard units in the mid-1960s, where it freed up KC-135s for service in Vietnam. Even with jet augmentation, the KC-97 was clearly obsolete by the 1970s, but a few KC-97Ls soldiered on until 1978, when it was finally withdrawn from service. A few briefly served with the Spanish Air Force during the 1970s, while Israel modified theirs to essentially KC-97 standard and utilized them in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. At least 26 KC-97s still exist in museums, and two are known to be airworthy.

 

This KC-97G is 52-0283, which entered service with the 70th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Little Rock AFB, Arkansas in 1955. It was retired in 1965, only to be reactivated from storage in 1970 and put back into service with the 106th Air Refuelling Group (Arizona ANG) at Tucson; it was also converted to a KC-97L with the addition of jets. It was retired for good in the late 1970s, and put on display at Carswell AFB, Texas (now JRB Fort Worth; the jets were removed to return it to a KC-97G). The years were not kind to 52-0283, and the USAF may have been preparing to scrap it when it was spotted by a Colorado Springs restauranteur. Several KC-97s had been turned into restaurants over the years, and this gentleman wanted to do the same.

 

52-0283 was bought in 2001, disassembled, and shipped to Colorado Springs, where it was reassembled. The restaurant was built around the left wing, which was left intact; the interior was refurbished into part of the restaurant, though the cockpit and boom operator station was left intact. (The boom has been removed.) It is now the only known KC-97 to be used as a restaurant in the world--another example in Oregon closed down, though the aircraft was later restored and is on display in Minneapolis.

 

I always wanted to see the legendary "Airplane Restaurant" (which is the actual name of the place), and finally got a chance in August 2020. Though it was open for dining in, my friend and I were in a hurry to get to Denver, so I only had time to get a quick picture, against a rather stormy sky at Colorado Springs (we hit that storm about 30 minutes later). 52-0283 is in good shape, though the markings have faded a bit; it still wears the colors of the 136th ARW (Texas ANG) that it was painted with at Carswell, though it doesn't appear to have ever flown with that unit.

 

EDIT: In May 2021, I finally got to eat here, in the KC-97! Pay it a visit--you won't regret it.

"Land Yachts: Postwar American Luxury Convertibles," an exhibit at the AACA Museum, Hershey, PA, February 23, 2019.

Postwar Sports- & Racing-cars

Concours d'Elégance Paleis Het Loo 2016

Apeldoorn

Nederland - Netherlands

July 2016

Architect: Homer Delawie (1968)

Location: San Diego, CA (Sunset Cliffs)

This home is currently for sale, from the children of the original owners.

 

Visit www.merceryork.com/OceanBeach2.html for more details.

Postwar Sports-/Racing-cars

Concours d'Elégance Paleis Het Loo 2016

Apeldoorn

Nederland - Netherlands

July 2016

This tramway substation was constructed circa 1948 during the postwar expansion of Brisbane’s public transport infrastructure. Electric trams were first introduced to Brisbane in 1897 and a number of substations were constructed throughout the City in the first half of the twentieth century in order to support continued expansion of the tramway system. This substation was designed by City Architect Frank Costello, who also designed a number of other municipal buildings in Brisbane throughout his career. In 1969 electric trams were phased out and the substation, still owned by SEQEB, was used as a museum for many years.

 

The first electric tramway began operating in Brisbane on the 21st of June 1897 and by 1914 tracks had been laid to Windsor. At the end of the First World War, it was clear the tramway system had become a necessity for mass transport. The system was expanded during the late 1920s and 1930s by the newly formed greater Brisbane City Council. To cope with this expansion a substation had been erected in 1927 at Windsor. However with further expansion of public transport in the post WWII period its capacity would prove inadequate.

 

In June 1947 the Brisbane City Council, utilising the State Transport Facilities Act 1946, resumed a number of private bus services in an attempt to co-ordinate bus routes. The previous war years had proved the most profitable for the Council transport system. the Brisbane City Council In 1947-48 placed orders for thirty electric trolley bus chassis. As these were to arrive during the 1949 - 1950 period it was necessary to have in place larger substations which would cope with the increased electricity demands of the trolley buses. This expansion included the purchase of both diesel and electric powered buses.

 

This tramway Substation was erected in 1948 as part of this post war expansion of Brisbane City transport infrastructure. While approval to construct the substation had been given in 1945 construction had been delayed until a suitable site had been located. The substation was to be erected at an estimated cost of £5000/0/0 and work on the structure was to be under taken by staff of the Electricity Department.

 

The structure was designed by Frank Costello who served as City Architect 1941 - 1952 and City Planner 1946 - 1952 before falling foul of the newly elected Roberts administration in 1952 which resulted in his and a number of other administrative staff’s dismissal. Costello was involved in other numerous designs of municipal buildings which included a number of substations, Mt Coot-tha Lookout, Eagle Farm Sewerage Pumping Station, air raid shelters, Mount Crosby Filtration Plant, and a number of planning schemes which have been described as ‘lost potential’ as few were put into practice.

 

Costello’s contribution to Municipal architecture was impressive. He is credited with providing an ‘architectural legacy to the city of Brisbane (which) was the architectural style new to Brisbane City Council.’ His work is reputed to be heavily influenced by the work of Netherlander Willem Dudok. The Windsor substation has been described as one of the best examples of Costello’s work.

 

In 1969, Brisbane’s electric trams were phased out and replaced completely by motorised buses. In October 1986, the then administering body for electricity SEQEB, utilised the building as a museum. The property has continued to be controlled by the administrative electrical body, now called ENERGEX and the building has ceased to operate as a museum pending relocation.

 

Source: Brisbane City Council Heritage Register.

In the postwar years, Fiat was working on an eight-cylinder engine which was internally known as Tipo 106. Dante Giacosa originally designed the engine for a luxury sedan, but then that project stopped. Rudolf Hruska, at the time working at S.I.A.T.A., was given the task to design a car around the V8 engine. Development took place in absolute secrecy. To not stress the experimental department of Fiat, S.I.A.T.A took up the production of the chassis. Styled by chief designer Fabio Luigi Rapi, the Fiat 8V or OttoVù was presented to the Italian press in February 1952 and first exhibited in the following March at the Geneva Motor Show.

 

The Fiat 8V prototype used an art deco grill that extended into the hood. A second series was made featuring four headlights with some of the later cars have a full-width windscreen. A high-performance coupé destined to compete in the GT class, the 2-litre 8V model, was a departure from the usual Fiat production. It was well accepted by Italian private drivers and tuners and was the car to beat in the 2-litre class, also thanks to the unique versions built by Zagato or Siata. The Fiat V8 had a 70-degree V configuration of up to a 1996 cc of volume, at 5600 rpm the engine produced 105 hp (78 kW) in standard form with two two-barrel Weber 36 DCS carburettors giving a top speed of 190 km/h (118 mph). Some engines were fitted with substantial four-throat Weber 36 IF4/C carburettors offering 120 bhp, but the intake manifold was very rare. The Fiat 8V is the only eight-cylinder built by Fiat. The engine was connected to a four-speed gearbox. The shapes of the car have seen several changes over time: the prototype had an art deco grille that extended into the bonnet. A second series was made with four headlights; finally, some of the latest cars had a large windshield without divisions. Only 114 of this high-performance coupé were produced, 63 of which with a “Fiat Carrozzerie Speciali” body, 34 first-series and 29 second-series. It was made available in different body styles, offered by the factory and by various coachbuilders like Zagato, Pinin Farina, Ghia and Vignale. The production ceased in 1954.

 

Text from:

 

www.carrozzieri-italiani.com/listing/fiat-8v-carrozzerie-...

The marvellous Cundy Street Flats, S.W.1, which were designed and completed between 1950 and 1952 by TP Bennett. The four blocks of flats are owned and maintained by the Grosvenor Estate.

Leyland Titan TD5 with postwar Northern Counties coachwork.

 

Michael Dryhurst.

Right next to the postwar models, the '42 is another one of my favorites. It's too bad this design only lasted 1 model year. I think all car companies ceased manufacturing in February of 1942 to switch to war production. These were seen on the streets as taxi cabs as well, the favorites being the famous Sky-View taxi's.

Postwar Ensign Ful-Vue Mk 2 (1950-54) Very similar to the Mk 1 but having a flash socket, different shutter (but same basic time or instant settings) and a now twisting lens focus system. 120 film.

Minox started the postwar subminiature camera craze, but the battles were mostly waged among lesser (and less expensive) marques. The Minolta-16 (model II shown here) and the Mamiya-16 (“Super 16” shown here) both sold for about $40 and were about the same size, but took a different approach to the design of the camera. Where the Mamiya has a focusing lens, built in (and interchangeable) filter, more shutter speeds and a parallax correcting collapsible viewfinder, the Minolta was easier and quicker to load and operate (and it was more Minox-like, and had a name that started with "Min"). Both did pretty well in the marketplace, but I think Minolta would have to be declared the winner in terms of popularity.

The Museum of the Dreamers

The Phantastenmuseum is a museum in the Palais Palffy in the 1st district of Vienna Inner City. It shows the evolution of fantastic, surreal and visionary art of the postwar period to the present.

History

Following discussions between the Austrian artist Ernst Fuchs (* 13. Februar 1930 in Wien; † 9. November 2015) and the publisher, organizer and author Gerhard Habarta the idea of a museum of fantastic art in Vienna came to the realization. The "Austrian Cultural Center since 1958" in the Palais Palffy was enthusiastic about the idea, the plans for the new museum were concretised in the year of 2010. In autumn 2010 was started with the adaptation of the premises, which was completed in January 2011. The opening of the museum took place under the patronage of Federal President Heinz Fischer on 15 January 2011.

Premises

For the museum parts of the historical Palais Palffy due to war damage in the 1950s renovated were used.

The foyer was designed by Lehmden student Kurt Welther about The Marriage of Figaro. Here, also a lobby with the ticket office, the information and the museum shop has been set up. In this one gifts like replicas of famous works of art, sculptures, jewelery, catalogs and posters as well as original editions are sold. On the 1st floor is located opposite the Figaro Concert Hall the gallery. It is a 150 m² large space for solo exhibitions. The museum occupies the entire top floor and consists of designed spaces. In addition to works from its own collection and permanent loans, documents and portraits of artist personalities are shown.

The museum

The museum is divided into the following areas:

Impulses: Here are the inspirations identified which brought the young artists first information after the war, with works by Edgar Jené and Gustav K. Beck and Arnulf Neuwirth.

Academy: Here, the young creatives found an artistic home, including works by Albert Paris Gütersloh, Ernst Fuchs, Fritz Janschka, Anton Lehmden and Kurt Steinwendner before he turned into the filmmaker and object artist Curt Stenvert.

Contemporaries: These include older artists of fantastic, who had survived the dictatorship, like Greta Freist, Kurt Goebel, Charles Lipka or the CIA agent Charles von Ripper. And the young ones, as Rudolf Schoenwald or Arnulf Rainer as well as painters who moved in later Art Club. These include the "partisan" Maria Biljan-Bilger, Peppino Wieternik before he turned to the abstract, and Carl Unger who designed a large glass front of the Palais Palffy.

Art Club: It gathered the artistic elite of the post-war period and became with the Strohkoffer (straw suitcase) a social center.

Dog Group: It became the first counter-movement, in which the rebels as Ernst Fuchs, Arnulf Rainer and Maria Lassnig, Wolfgang Kudrnofsky and maverick visionary Anton Krejcar with graphics that today have become valuable manifested themselves.

The Pintorarium of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Ernst Fuchs and Arnulf Rainer fought actionistically with wall newspaper and nude demonstration against the established Academy, bad architecture and for the freedom of the spirit.

Hundertwasser realized the theories of Pintorarium in his buildings. A photo documentation of Kurt Pultar.

Vienna School of Fantastic Realism: The core of the museum with pictures of Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hutter, Fritz Janschka, who lives in the United States and Anton Lehmden. Of Rudolf Hausner is - in addition to an oil painting - the documentation of long-term work on his Ark of Odysseus to see. In addition to an early work by Ernst Fuchs, a specially created for the museum great painting version of a 55 years ago arosen drawing is shown.

In the department of simultaneous 16 images of that Viennese Fantasts can be seen who presented themselves in the 1960s for the first time, among other things, in the gallery that installed Ernst Fuchs.

In the Department Next Generation are those almost still "young ones" which - despite temporary exclusion by the avant-garde - are committed to the new tendencies of the fantastic. They studied partly with Hausner, Lehmden, Hutter and Fuchs and also learned as wizards.

The Graphic Cabinet presents some etchings and lithographs to stamps. Here the global network is shown in about 30 works by international visionaries. Representatives from Japan, the US, Australia and European centers are the ambassadors of associations of fantastic artists, the Ambassadors of the Fantastic Universe.

 

Phantastenmuseum

Das Phantastenmuseum ist ein Museum im Palais Pálffy im 1. Wiener Gemeindebezirk Innere Stadt. Es zeigt die Entwicklung der phantastischen, surrealen und visionären Kunst von der Nachkriegszeit bis zur Gegenwart.

Geschichte

Nach Gesprächen zwischen dem österreichischen Künstler Ernst Fuchs und dem Verleger, Organisator und Autor Gerhard Habarta entstand die Idee zur Verwirklichung eines Museums für phantastische Kunst in Wien. Das „Österreichische Kulturzentrum seit 1958“ im Palais Pálffy zeigte sich von der Idee begeistert, die Pläne für das neue Museum wurden im Jahr 2010 konkretisiert. Im Herbst 2010 wurde mit der Adaptierung der Räumlichkeiten begonnen, die im Jänner 2011 abgeschlossen wurde. Die Eröffnung des Museums fand am 15. Jänner 2011 unter dem Ehrenschutz von Bundespräsident Heinz Fischer statt.

Räumlichkeiten

Für das Museum wurden Teile des historischen, aufgrund Kriegsschäden in den 1950er Jahren renovierten Palais Pálffy genutzt.

Das Foyer wurde vom Lehmden-Schüler Kurt Welther zum Thema Figaros Hochzeit gestaltet. Hier wurde auch ein Empfangsbereich mit der Ticketkasse, der Information und dem Museums-Shop eingerichtet. In diesem werden Geschenke wie Nachbildungen berühmter Kunstwerke, Skulpturen, Schmuck, Kataloge und Kunstdrucke sowie auch Original-Editionen verkauft. Im 1. Stock befindet sich gegenüber dem Figaro-Konzertsaal die Galerie. Es handelt sich um einen 150 m² großen Raum für Einzelausstellungen. Das Museum nimmt das gesamte Obergeschoss ein und besteht aus gestalteten Räumen. Neben den Werken aus eigenem Bestand und Dauerleihgaben werden Dokumente und Porträts der Künstlerpersönlichkeiten gezeigt.

Das Museum

Das Museum ist in folgende Bereiche gegliedert:

Impulse: Hier werden die Impulse aufgezeigt, die den jungen Künstlern erste Informationen nach dem Krieg brachten, mit Werken von Edgar Jené und Gustav K. Beck und Arnulf Neuwirth.

Akademie: Hier fanden die jungen Kreativen eine künstlerische Heimat, mit Werken von Albert Paris Gütersloh, Ernst Fuchs, Fritz Janschka, Anton Lehmden und Kurt Steinwendner, bevor er zum Filmemacher und Objektkünstler Curt Stenvert wurde.

Zeitgenossen: Dazu zählen ältere Künstler des Phantastischen, die die Diktatur überlebt hatten, wie Greta Freist, Kurt Goebel, Charles Lipka oder der CIA-Agent Charles von Ripper. Und die Jungen, wie Rudolf Schönwald oder Arnulf Rainer sowie Maler die sich im späteren Art Club bewegten. Dazu gehören die „Partisanin“ Maria Biljan-Bilger, Peppino Wieternik, bevor er sich zum Abstrakten wandte, und Carl Unger der für das Palais Pálffy eine große Glasfront gestaltete.

Art Club: Er versammelte die künstlerische Elite der Nachkriegszeit und wurde mit dem Strohkoffer ein geselliges Zentrum.

Hundsgruppe: Sie wurde zur ersten Gegenbewegung, in der sich die Aufrührer wie Ernst Fuchs, Arnulf Rainer und Maria Lassnig, Wolfgang Kudrnofsky und der Außenseiter-Phantast Anton Krejcar mit heute wertvoll gewordenen Grafiken manifestierten.

Das Pintorarium von Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Ernst Fuchs und Arnulf Rainer kämpfte aktionistisch mit Wandzeitung und Nacktdemonstration gegen die etablierte Akademie, schlechte Architektur und für die Freiheit des Geistes.

Hundertwasser verwirklichte die Theorien des Pintorariums in seinen Bauten. Eine Fotodokumentation von Kurt Pultar.

Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus: Der Kern des Museums mit Bildern von Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hutter, dem in den USA lebenden Fritz Janschka und von Anton Lehmden. Von Rudolf Hausner ist - neben einem Ölbild - die Dokumentation der langjährigen Arbeit an seiner Arche des Odysseus zu sehen. Neben einem Frühwerk von Ernst Fuchs ist auch eine eigens für das Museum geschaffene große Gemälde-Fassung einer vor 55 Jahren entstandenen Zeichnung ausgestellt.

In der Abteilung der Gleichzeitigen sind 16 Bilder jener Wiener Fantasten zu sehen, die sich in den 1960er-Jahren zum ersten Mal präsentierten, u.a. in der Galerie, die Ernst Fuchs installierte.

In der Abteilung Next Generation sind jene fast „noch Jungen“, die sich – trotz zeitweiliger Ausgrenzung durch die Avantgarde – neuen Tendenzen des Phantastischen verpflichtet fühlen. Sie haben zum Teil bei Hausner, Lehmden, Hutter und Fuchs studiert und auch als Assistenten gelernt.

Das Graphische Kabinett stellt einige Radierungen und Lithographien bis hin zu Briefmarken aus. Hier wird in etwa 30 Werken internationaler Phantasten die weltweite Vernetzung gezeigt. Vertreter aus Japan, den USA, Australien und europäischen Zentren sind die Botschafter von Vereinigungen phantastischer Künstler, den Ambassadors of the Fantastic Universe.

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantastenmuseum

14USD from a local antique store. An attractive camera from Japan the 1950s. Came equipped with a 35mm f/3.5 Taikor lens.

 

You set the shutter speed by rotating a ring located on the back of the lens. The shutter speed selected is indicated by a pointer moving in an arc across a marked band (seen here on the right-hand of the lens assembly. Nice. But . . . there is also a very finely-made brass chain that connects shutter speed setting to a tiny window on the top plate in front of the cold shoe of the camera. It redirects a lot of human twisting energy to coordinate showing the shutter speed setting there as well. Seeing the speed on the top plate is something you really don't need, but bravo for the engineering attempt. It ends up just needlessly complicating an otherwise solid design. And, in fact, this added mechanism led to this example not being able to have its shutter speed changed at all - stuck fast.

Who would've thought the U.K. would have an Asian Prime Minister - and he would try to incite racial hatred for his political ends?

1/76 scale model tramway layout.

4,0 Litre

6 In-line

150 hp

 

Class III : Post War "1945-1965"

Zoute Concours d'Elegance

Royal Zoute Golf Club

 

Zoute Grand Prix 2022

Knokke - Zoute

België - Belgium

October 2022

Jean-Robert Ipoustéguy (January 6, 1920 – February 8, 2006), a figurative French sculptor, was born "Jean Robert" in Dun-sur-Meuse. His artwork had a distinct style, combining abstract elements with the human figure, often in the écorché style of French anatomists. The American writer John Updike once wrote that he "may be France's foremost living sculptor, but he is little known in the United States".  He and other critics noted sharp contrasts between rough and smooth, abstract and realistic, tender and violent, delicate and crude, and many other paired oppositions in his artwork, and his recurrent themes of sex, birth, growth, decay, death, and resurrection. Ipoustéguy was unafraid to depict emotional intensity in a sometimes controversial way; several of his major commissioned works were rejected, but later installed as planned, or in other locations.

 

Early life and education

In 1920, Jean-Robert Ipoustéguy was born "Jean Robert" in Dun-sur-Meuse, between Verdun and Sedan, in the recent aftermath of the ruinous trench warfare of World War I.  Jean's father was a joiner, earning a living by producing fine woodwork, who also enjoyed painting, violin playing, and amateur theatrical productions. He also had a great love of reading, which he passed on to his son, who did very well in school. The artist later remembered his father as "soft and sweet", but recalled his mother as being "strict".

 

As a boy, Ipoustéguy played in the surrounding fields, but as he dug into the earth, he would sense the presence of death beneath him. He harbored a secret ambition to become a painter, but he hid this from his father, who held the profession in low regard.

 

At the age of 18, Ipoustéguy moved to Paris, where he got a job as a legal clerk and courier. On a winter afternoon in 1938, he saw a poster offering an evening art class taught by Robert Lesbounit, and signed up immediately.  The teacher encouraged him to read books far beyond the level of his classmates, and introduced him to a deeper understanding of art history through visits to the Louvre and art galleries.  Lesbounit recognized his student's talent, and they would become lifelong friends. At these evening classes, he also met the sculptor known as "Adam" (Henri-Georges Adam).

 

Art studies were disrupted by World War II and the German invasion of France. Ipoustéguy was mobilized into the French artillery, and relocated to southwest France. Under the Vichy regime, he was assigned as an ironworker and cement worker on the Atlantic Wall and later the submarine base at Bordeaux, incidentally acquiring practical skills he would later use in his artworks. During this difficult period, he produced drawings when he could  such as Soldat endormi (Soldier asleep, 1941) and Sanguine nu de femme (Fiery female nude, 1941) After the Liberation of France, he returned to Paris to resume his art studies with Robert Lesbounit, finishing his evening course of study in 1946.

 

Career

In 1947-48, he joined a "collective" of teachers and young artists creating frescos and stained glass windows for the church of Saint-Jacques, Petit-Montrouge, Paris

 

In 1949, he set up his studio in Choisy-le-Roi, approximately 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) southeast of the center of Paris, and began to work on sculpture. His workspace was in an old ceramics factory, which he gradually took over and converted into a family living space, filled with completed sculpture and works-in-progress.

 

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the artist began to append his mother's Basque maiden name, "Ipoustéguy", after his given name, since "Robert" is a very common surname in France.

 

In 1953, he turned away from oil painting and dedicated himself to the production of sculpture, in spite of a warning from Kahnweiler, his art dealer at the time, that it would not sell.  Ipoustéguy continued to produce numerous drawings, watercolors, and writings throughout the remainder of his career. For a few years his sculptures were mostly abstract, and he resisted a temptation to make figurative work which was unfashionable at the time.  For example, Cénotaphe (1957) was a purely abstract, geometric artwork, a stainless steel memorial to deceased absence.

 

Ipoustéguy gradually moved towards figurative work, and some of his early sculptures were abstracted heads in bronze, such as Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc, 1957), Roger Binne (1959), Homme qui rit (Man who laughs, 1960), and Tete de mort (Skull, 1961). A figurative work from this time was Étude de femme (Study of woman, 1959). 

 

In 1962, he established a relationship with the Paris gallery of Claude Bernard, which would last for the rest of his life. Around this time, on a honeymoon trip to Greece, he rediscovered artwork from the 5th century BCE.  This was a revelation which inspired the artist to intensify his focus on the nude and the anatomy of the human body.  Upon his return, he made La Terre (Earth) and Homme (Man), two large bronze nudes that would characterize his renewed interest in the human figure.

 

In 1964, he had his first overseas show, at the Albert Loeb Gallery in New York City.  His work was recognized and acquired by at least six American museums, and by the Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller Collection in New York.

 

In 1965, he completed Ecbatane, a major work portraying Alexander the Great contemplating the ancient city of Ecbatana. It was his first work using the novel material polystyrene, which would be cast in bronze using a technique similar to lost-wax casting. The new sculptural medium allowed him to explore increased levels of detail and texture in his work.

 

In 1966–1967, he returned for a while to figurative painting, mostly in white hues reminiscent of marble, but also produced Homme passant la porte (Man traversing the door) and La femme au bain (Woman in the bath), two masterworks in bronze which would win him wide acclaim.

 

In August 1967, he went to the Nicoli studio in Carrare, to try his hand at sculpting marble. Within a week, he had completed La grande coude (The great elbow), a flexed arm with bulging muscles and veins

 

In February 1968, Ipoustéguy's father died. The sculptor had been working on a white marble commemoration of Pope John XXIII, which he then modified by incorporating images of his deceased father's hands and face into Mort du père (Death of the father).  The work became famous for its acquisition by the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, after a parliamentary debate about the high price it commanded.  He also carved the intricate white marble sculpture L'Agonie de la mère (Agony of the mother) to memorialize his mother's recent death from breast cancer.

 

The May 1968 events in France affected Ipoustéguy, who produced a series of political posters during Le temps des cerises ("The time of the cherries").

 

In 1968, he also produced Naissance (Birth), in both white marble and polished bronze versions and Sein tactile (Tactile breast) a white marble sculpture that visually invited sensuous caresses. 

 

In 1970 he produced La brouette (Wheelbarrow), Lune de miel (Honeymoon), and Le calice (Chalice), small, frankly erotic sculptures. 

 

In 1971, he received his first official commission, for Homme forçant l'unitė (Man forcing unity), installed at the Franco-German nuclear physics research center at Grenoble.

 

In 1975, Ipoustéguy was awarded a major commission from the United States, La mort de l'évêque Neumann (Death of Bishop Neumann), to commemorate John Neumann, the country's first Catholic bishop to be canonized. According to legend, he had collapsed suddenly in the street, dying ignored by all except a little blind girl. Ipoustéguy modeled the girl after his own recently deceased daughter Céline. Upon presentation of the composite white marble and bronze artwork, it was thought to be too violent and emotional, so it was rejected. He also completed Érose en sommeil (Eros in sleep), a complex marble work depicting intertwined hands.

 

In 1976, he completed Maison (House), a two-piece polished bronze showing a frank heterosexual coupling as the framework and foundation of the domestic environment, and the boldly anatomical abstract Triptyche  He also produced Petit écorché (Little flayed one) and Scène comique de la vie moderne (Comic scene of modern life), both depicting frantic figures; the latter one was later displayed clutching a real red-colored telephone.

 

In 1977, he received a commission from the Val-de-Grâce hospital; the namesake bronze sculpture was rejected twice, before being accepted and installed in the new hospital entry rotunda. The sculpture shows a standing nude figure, apparently shedding an anguished skin or shell, and supported by robust tubular elements

 

In 1978, he had a retrospective show at the Fondation Nationale des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques (National Foundation of Graphic and Plastic Arts) in Paris.

 

In 1979, he had a retrospective show at the Kunsthalle in Berlin, featuring 242 of his artworks.  The same year, his largest sculpture, L'homme construit sa ville (Man builds his city), was installed at the Congress Centre in Berlin. 

 

In 1982 Louise Labé, at Place Louis Pradel in Lyon

 

In 1985 L'homme aux semelles devant (à Rimbaud) (Man with soles in front, to Rimbaud), in Paris

 

In 1989 A la santé de la Révolution (To the health of the Revolution) in Bagnolet (France)

 

In 1991, Nicolas Appert in Châlons en Champagne (France)

 

In 1998, he produced Âge des interrogations and Âge des conclusions, reflections on approaching mortality.

 

In 1999, Porte du Ciel (Door of the Sky), Braunschweig (Germany)

 

In 2001 Ipoustéguy installed his sculpture La mort de l'évêque Neumann (cast in 1976), which had been rejected by the Americans almost a quarter-century earlier. He placed it in the church of Dun-sur-Meuse, near his birthplace.  That same year, a catalogue raisonné of his artworks was published by Éditions la Différence A new Centre culturel Ipoustéguy (Ipoustéguy Cultural Center) was opened in the town of his birth, featuring dozens of artworks donated by the artist.

 

In 2003 he returned to Dun-sur-Meuse, settling a few hundred meters from the house where he was born, and near the Centre culturel Ipoustéguy.

 

Ipoustéguy died in 2006, at the age of 86. He is buried at Cimetière de Montparnasse, Paris, in a tomb which features one of his sculptures.

 

His first posthumous retrospective exhibition was at the Palazzo Leone da Perego, in Legnano, Italy (October 2008 to February 2009).  Throughout his career, he had produced many paintings in oil, watercolor, and gouache, and many drawings in charcoal, some of which were displayed alongside his sculptural work 

 

Artistic style

 

L'Homme (1963) depicts a nude figure standing on three legs

Ipoustéguy's early sculptural work was mostly abstract, but starting around 1959 his work focused on the human figure (either complete or in anatomical fragments), often combined with abstract elements. His figures often show aspects of the écorché style used by French anatomists, with layers of skin and muscle partially dissected. Ipoustéguy's prime work often emphasizes contrasts between smooth finishes and a roughness of "decay or willful destruction". Ipoustéguy has remarked: J'ai cassé l'oeuf de Brancusi ("I broke Brancusi's egg"). He could skillfully render the textures of fragile materials such as cloth or paper in his favored sculptural media, durable stone and bronze.

 

Ipoustéguy's sculptures often depict multiple points of view or points in time simultaneously, resulting in human figures with three arms, three legs, or multiple profiles. Secondary elements may be bodily shells or carapaces, sometimes mounted on hinges.  His work was influenced by Surrealism, freely combining realistic elements with the fantastical, and focusing on social issues, sex, birth, growth, decay, death, and resurrection as major themes. The frankness and uncensored directness of some of his artistic output led to objections from a few religious and political groups; nevertheless, his work is displayed at French embassies and major museums throughout the world.

 

Despite his focus on the human figure, Ipoustéguy also produced large abstract sculptures, such as Sun, Moon, Heaven (1999).

 

Ipoustéguy also wrote extensively throughout his life, and granted many interviews, but relatively little has been translated into English.

 

Personal life

In his prime, Ipoustéguy was a sturdy, squat, stocky ("trapu") man, with strong arms and hands, and was often photographed working bare-chested.

 

He married Geneviève Gilles in 1943, and they had a son, Dominique, in 1945. 

 

In 1963, he married Françoise Delacouturiere, producing two daughters, Céline (1965) and Marie-Pierre (1969).

 

In the late 1960s, his art took a more somber turn, affected by the deaths of both his parents and some of his friends. He memorialized his father in La mort du père (Death of the father, 1968), and his mother's death from breast cancer in L'Agonie de la mère (Agony of the mother, 1968)  The theme of mortality became more prominent in his work.

 

In November 1974, he learned via telephone that his 10-year-old daughter Céline had died suddenly, a brutal shock which caused him to abandon work for a time.

 

At his death in 2006, he was survived by Françoise Robert (his second wife), and by his children Dominique and Marie-Pierre. They are credited with helping to support a posthumous retrospective exhibition at the Palazzo Leone da Perego, in Legnano, Italy.

 

Prizes, awards, and honors

 

1964, Bright Prize, Venice Biennale exhibition

1977, Grand National Prize for Art

1984, Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur

2003, Prix de la sculpture de la Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca.

 

Museums and public art collections

Sun, Moon, Heaven (1999)

Abu Dhabi, National Museum of Saadiyat Island.

Baltimore, Baltimore Museum of Art.

Berlin, Nationalgalerie.

Bobigny, Fonds Départemental d’Art Contemporain.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, US (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT) — Cénotaphe (1957)

Châlons en Champagne, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie.

Chicago, Art Institute.

Copenhagen, Carlsberg Glyptotek.

Darmstadt, Hessiches Landesmuseum.

Dun sur Meuse, Centre Ipoustéguy

Evanston, Illinois, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art

Grenoble, Musée d’Art Moderne.

Hannover, Sprengel Museum.

London, Tate.

London, Victoria and Albert Museum.

Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts.

Marseille, Musée Cantini.

Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria.

New York, The Museum of Modern Art.

New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Art.

Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Paris, Musée de la Sculpture en Plein Air.

Pittsburgh, The Carnegie Museum.

Tokyo, Hakone Museum of Art.

Toulouse, Artothèque.

Troyes, Musée d’Art Moderne.

Washington, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden – L'Homme passant la porte "Man traversing the door" (sometimes identified as L'Homme poussant la porte, "Man pushing the door")

 

Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. With an official estimated population of 2,102,650 residents as of 1 January 2023[2] in an area of more than 105 km2 (41 sq mi) Paris is the fourth-most populated city in the European Union and the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2022. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, culture, fashion, and gastronomy. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its early and extensive system of street lighting, in the 19th century, it became known as the City of Light.

 

The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an official estimated population of 12,271,794 inhabitants on 1 January 2023, or about 19% of the population of France, The Paris Region had a GDP of €765 billion (US$1.064 trillion, PPP) in 2021, the highest in the European Union. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey, in 2022, Paris was the city with the ninth-highest cost of living in the world.

 

Paris is a major railway, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports: Charles de Gaulle Airport (the third-busiest airport in Europe) and Orly Airport. Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily; it is the second-busiest metro system in Europe after the Moscow Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th-busiest railway station in the world and the busiest outside Japan, with 262 million passengers in 2015. Paris has one of the most sustainable transportation systems and is one of the only two cities in the world that received the Sustainable Transport Award twice.

 

Paris is especially known for its museums and architectural landmarks: the Louvre received 8.9. million visitors in 2023, on track for keeping its position as the most-visited art museum in the world. The Musée d'Orsay, Musée Marmottan Monet and Musée de l'Orangerie are noted for their collections of French Impressionist art. The Pompidou Centre Musée National d'Art Moderne, Musée Rodin and Musée Picasso are noted for their collections of modern and contemporary art. The historical district along the Seine in the city centre has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1991.

 

Paris hosts several United Nations organizations including UNESCO, and other international organizations such as the OECD, the OECD Development Centre, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, the International Energy Agency, the International Federation for Human Rights, along with European bodies such as the European Space Agency, the European Banking Authority and the European Securities and Markets Authority. The football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris. The 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros. The city hosted the Olympic Games in 1900 and 1924, and will host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup, the 2007 Rugby World Cup, as well as the 1960, 1984 and 2016 UEFA European Championships were also held in the city. Every July, the Tour de France bicycle race finishes on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris.

 

The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the area's major north–south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, which gradually became an important trading centre. The Parisii traded with many river towns (some as far away as the Iberian Peninsula) and minted their own coins.

 

The Romans conquered the Paris Basin in 52 BC and began their settlement on Paris's Left Bank. The Roman town was originally called Lutetia (more fully, Lutetia Parisiorum, "Lutetia of the Parisii", modern French Lutèce). It became a prosperous city with a forum, baths, temples, theatres, and an amphitheatre.

 

By the end of the Western Roman Empire, the town was known as Parisius, a Latin name that would later become Paris in French. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum (Latin "Hill of Martyrs"), later "Montmartre", from where he walked headless to the north of the city; the place where he fell and was buried became an important religious shrine, the Basilica of Saint-Denis, and many French kings are buried there.

 

Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. As the Frankish domination of Gaul began, there was a gradual immigration by the Franks to Paris and the Parisian Francien dialects were born. Fortification of the Île de la Cité failed to avert sacking by Vikings in 845, but Paris's strategic importance—with its bridges preventing ships from passing—was established by successful defence in the Siege of Paris (885–886), for which the then Count of Paris (comte de Paris), Odo of France, was elected king of West Francia. From the Capetian dynasty that began with the 987 election of Hugh Capet, Count of Paris and Duke of the Franks (duc des Francs), as king of a unified West Francia, Paris gradually became the largest and most prosperous city in France.

 

By the end of the 12th century, Paris had become the political, economic, religious, and cultural capital of France.[36] The Palais de la Cité, the royal residence, was located at the western end of the Île de la Cité. In 1163, during the reign of Louis VII, Maurice de Sully, bishop of Paris, undertook the construction of the Notre Dame Cathedral at its eastern extremity.

 

After the marshland between the river Seine and its slower 'dead arm' to its north was filled in from around the 10th century, Paris's cultural centre began to move to the Right Bank. In 1137, a new city marketplace (today's Les Halles) replaced the two smaller ones on the Île de la Cité and Place de Grève (Place de l'Hôtel de Ville). The latter location housed the headquarters of Paris's river trade corporation, an organisation that later became, unofficially (although formally in later years), Paris's first municipal government.

 

In the late 12th century, Philip Augustus extended the Louvre fortress to defend the city against river invasions from the west, gave the city its first walls between 1190 and 1215, rebuilt its bridges to either side of its central island, and paved its main thoroughfares. In 1190, he transformed Paris's former cathedral school into a student-teacher corporation that would become the University of Paris and would draw students from all of Europe.

 

With 200,000 inhabitants in 1328, Paris, then already the capital of France, was the most populous city of Europe. By comparison, London in 1300 had 80,000 inhabitants. By the early fourteenth century, so much filth had collected inside urban Europe that French and Italian cities were naming streets after human waste. In medieval Paris, several street names were inspired by merde, the French word for "shit".

 

During the Hundred Years' War, Paris was occupied by England-friendly Burgundian forces from 1418, before being occupied outright by the English when Henry V of England entered the French capital in 1420; in spite of a 1429 effort by Joan of Arc to liberate the city, it would remain under English occupation until 1436.

 

In the late 16th-century French Wars of Religion, Paris was a stronghold of the Catholic League, the organisers of 24 August 1572 St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in which thousands of French Protestants were killed. The conflicts ended when pretender to the throne Henry IV, after converting to Catholicism to gain entry to the capital, entered the city in 1594 to claim the crown of France. This king made several improvements to the capital during his reign: he completed the construction of Paris's first uncovered, sidewalk-lined bridge, the Pont Neuf, built a Louvre extension connecting it to the Tuileries Palace, and created the first Paris residential square, the Place Royale, now Place des Vosges. In spite of Henry IV's efforts to improve city circulation, the narrowness of Paris's streets was a contributing factor in his assassination near Les Halles marketplace in 1610.

 

During the 17th century, Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of Louis XIII, was determined to make Paris the most beautiful city in Europe. He built five new bridges, a new chapel for the College of Sorbonne, and a palace for himself, the Palais-Cardinal. After Richelieu's death in 1642, it was renamed the Palais-Royal.

 

Due to the Parisian uprisings during the Fronde civil war, Louis XIV moved his court to a new palace, Versailles, in 1682. Although no longer the capital of France, arts and sciences in the city flourished with the Comédie-Française, the Academy of Painting, and the French Academy of Sciences. To demonstrate that the city was safe from attack, the king had the city walls demolished and replaced with tree-lined boulevards that would become the Grands Boulevards. Other marks of his reign were the Collège des Quatre-Nations, the Place Vendôme, the Place des Victoires, and Les Invalides.

 

18th and 19th centuries

Empire, and Haussmann's renovation of Paris

Paris grew in population from about 400,000 in 1640, to 650,000 in 1780. A new boulevard named the Champs-Élysées extended the city west to Étoile, while the working-class neighbourhood of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine on the eastern side of the city grew increasingly crowded with poor migrant workers from other regions of France.

 

Paris was the centre of an explosion of philosophic and scientific activity, known as the Age of Enlightenment. Diderot and d'Alembert published their Encyclopédie in 1751, and the Montgolfier Brothers launched the first manned flight in a hot air balloon on 21 November 1783. Paris was the financial capital of continental Europe, and the primary European centre of book publishing, fashion and the manufacture of fine furniture and luxury goods.

 

In the summer of 1789, Paris became the centre stage of the French Revolution. On 14 July, a mob seized the arsenal at the Invalides, acquiring thousands of guns, and stormed the Bastille, which was a principal symbol of royal authority. The first independent Paris Commune, or city council, met in the Hôtel de Ville and elected a Mayor, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, on 15 July.

 

Louis XVI and the royal family were brought to Paris and incarcerated in the Tuileries Palace. In 1793, as the revolution turned increasingly radical, the king, queen and mayor were beheaded by guillotine in the Reign of Terror, along with more than 16,000 others throughout France. The property of the aristocracy and the church was nationalised, and the city's churches were closed, sold or demolished. A succession of revolutionary factions ruled Paris until 9 November 1799 (coup d'état du 18 brumaire), when Napoleon Bonaparte seized power as First Consul.

 

The population of Paris had dropped by 100,000 during the Revolution, but after 1799 it surged with 160,000 new residents, reaching 660,000 by 1815. Napoleon replaced the elected government of Paris with a prefect that reported directly to him. He began erecting monuments to military glory, including the Arc de Triomphe, and improved the neglected infrastructure of the city with new fountains, the Canal de l'Ourcq, Père Lachaise Cemetery and the city's first metal bridge, the Pont des Arts.

  

The Eiffel Tower, under construction in November 1888, startled Parisians—and the world—with its modernity.

During the Restoration, the bridges and squares of Paris were returned to their pre-Revolution names; the July Revolution in 1830 (commemorated by the July Column on the Place de la Bastille) brought to power a constitutional monarch, Louis Philippe I. The first railway line to Paris opened in 1837, beginning a new period of massive migration from the provinces to the city. In 1848, Louis-Philippe was overthrown by a popular uprising in the streets of Paris. His successor, Napoleon III, alongside the newly appointed prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, launched a huge public works project to build wide new boulevards, a new opera house, a central market, new aqueducts, sewers and parks, including the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes. In 1860, Napoleon III annexed the surrounding towns and created eight new arrondissements, expanding Paris to its current limits.

 

During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), Paris was besieged by the Prussian Army. Following several months of blockade, hunger, and then bombardment by the Prussians, the city was forced to surrender on 28 January 1871. After seizing power in Paris on 28 March, a revolutionary government known as the Paris Commune held power for two months, before being harshly suppressed by the French army during the "Bloody Week" at the end of May 1871.

 

In the late 19th century, Paris hosted two major international expositions: the 1889 Universal Exposition, which featured the new Eiffel Tower, was held to mark the centennial of the French Revolution; and the 1900 Universal Exposition gave Paris the Pont Alexandre III, the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais and the first Paris Métro line. Paris became the laboratory of Naturalism (Émile Zola) and Symbolism (Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine), and of Impressionism in art (Courbet, Manet, Monet, Renoir).

 

20th and 21st centuries

World War, Paris between the Wars (1919–1939), Paris in World War II, and History of Paris (1946–2000)

By 1901, the population of Paris had grown to about 2,715,000. At the beginning of the century, artists from around the world including Pablo Picasso, Modigliani, and Henri Matisse made Paris their home. It was the birthplace of Fauvism, Cubism and abstract art, and authors such as Marcel Proust were exploring new approaches to literature.

 

During the First World War, Paris sometimes found itself on the front line; 600 to 1,000 Paris taxis played a small but highly important symbolic role in transporting 6,000 soldiers to the front line at the First Battle of the Marne. The city was also bombed by Zeppelins and shelled by German long-range guns. In the years after the war, known as Les Années Folles, Paris continued to be a mecca for writers, musicians and artists from around the world, including Ernest Hemingway, Igor Stravinsky, James Joyce, Josephine Baker, Eva Kotchever, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Sidney Bechet and Salvador Dalí.

 

In the years after the peace conference, the city was also home to growing numbers of students and activists from French colonies and other Asian and African countries, who later became leaders of their countries, such as Ho Chi Minh, Zhou Enlai and Léopold Sédar Senghor.

  

General Charles de Gaulle on the Champs-Élysées celebrating the liberation of Paris, 26 August 1944

On 14 June 1940, the German army marched into Paris, which had been declared an "open city". On 16–17 July 1942, following German orders, the French police and gendarmes arrested 12,884 Jews, including 4,115 children, and confined them during five days at the Vel d'Hiv (Vélodrome d'Hiver), from which they were transported by train to the extermination camp at Auschwitz. None of the children came back. On 25 August 1944, the city was liberated by the French 2nd Armoured Division and the 4th Infantry Division of the United States Army. General Charles de Gaulle led a huge and emotional crowd down the Champs Élysées towards Notre Dame de Paris, and made a rousing speech from the Hôtel de Ville.

 

In the 1950s and the 1960s, Paris became one front of the Algerian War for independence; in August 1961, the pro-independence FLN targeted and killed 11 Paris policemen, leading to the imposition of a curfew on Muslims of Algeria (who, at that time, were French citizens). On 17 October 1961, an unauthorised but peaceful protest demonstration of Algerians against the curfew led to violent confrontations between the police and demonstrators, in which at least 40 people were killed. The anti-independence Organisation armée secrète (OAS) carried out a series of bombings in Paris throughout 1961 and 1962.

 

In May 1968, protesting students occupied the Sorbonne and put up barricades in the Latin Quarter. Thousands of Parisian blue-collar workers joined the students, and the movement grew into a two-week general strike. Supporters of the government won the June elections by a large majority. The May 1968 events in France resulted in the break-up of the University of Paris into 13 independent campuses. In 1975, the National Assembly changed the status of Paris to that of other French cities and, on 25 March 1977, Jacques Chirac became the first elected mayor of Paris since 1793. The Tour Maine-Montparnasse, the tallest building in the city at 57 storeys and 210 m (689 ft) high, was built between 1969 and 1973. It was highly controversial, and it remains the only building in the centre of the city over 32 storeys high. The population of Paris dropped from 2,850,000 in 1954 to 2,152,000 in 1990, as middle-class families moved to the suburbs. A suburban railway network, the RER (Réseau Express Régional), was built to complement the Métro; the Périphérique expressway encircling the city, was completed in 1973.

 

Most of the postwar presidents of the Fifth Republic wanted to leave their own monuments in Paris; President Georges Pompidou started the Centre Georges Pompidou (1977), Valéry Giscard d'Estaing began the Musée d'Orsay (1986); President François Mitterrand had the Opéra Bastille built (1985–1989), the new site of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (1996), the Arche de la Défense (1985–1989) in La Défense, as well as the Louvre Pyramid with its underground courtyard (1983–1989); Jacques Chirac (2006), the Musée du quai Branly.

 

In the early 21st century, the population of Paris began to increase slowly again, as more young people moved into the city. It reached 2.25 million in 2011. In March 2001, Bertrand Delanoë became the first socialist mayor. He was re-elected in March 2008. In 2007, in an effort to reduce car traffic, he introduced the Vélib', a system which rents bicycles. Bertrand Delanoë also transformed a section of the highway along the Left Bank of the Seine into an urban promenade and park, the Promenade des Berges de la Seine, which he inaugurated in June 2013.

 

In 2007, President Nicolas Sarkozy launched the Grand Paris project, to integrate Paris more closely with the towns in the region around it. After many modifications, the new area, named the Metropolis of Grand Paris, with a population of 6.7 million, was created on 1 January 2016. In 2011, the City of Paris and the national government approved the plans for the Grand Paris Express, totalling 205 km (127 mi) of automated metro lines to connect Paris, the innermost three departments around Paris, airports and high-speed rail (TGV) stations, at an estimated cost of €35 billion.The system is scheduled to be completed by 2030.

 

In January 2015, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed attacks across the Paris region. 1.5 million people marched in Paris in a show of solidarity against terrorism and in support of freedom of speech. In November of the same year, terrorist attacks, claimed by ISIL, killed 130 people and injured more than 350.

 

On 22 April 2016, the Paris Agreement was signed by 196 nations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in an aim to limit the effects of climate change below 2 °C.

 

The Chipmunk was the first postwar aviation project conducted by de Havilland Canada. It performed its maiden flight on 22 May 1946 and was introduced to operational service that same year. During the late 1940s and 1950s, the Chipmunk was procured in large numbers by military air services such as the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), Royal Air Force (RAF), and several other nations' air forces, where it was often utilised as their standard primary trainer aircraft. The type was also produced under licence by de Havilland in the United Kingdom, who would produce the vast majority of Chipmunks, as well as by OGMA (Oficinas Gerais de Material Aeronáutico) in Portugal.

 

The type was slowly phased out of service from the late 1950s onwards, although in the ab initio basic training role, this did not occur within the Royal Air Force until 1996, having finally been replaced by the Scottish Aviation Bulldog. However, many of the Chipmunks that had been formerly in military use were sold on to civilians, either to private owners or to companies, where they were typically used for a variety of purposes, often involving the type's excellent flying characteristics and its capability for aerobatic manoeuvres. More than 70 years after the type having first entered service, hundreds of Chipmunks remain airworthy and are in operation around the world. The Portuguese Air Force still operates six Chipmunks, which serve with Esquadra 802, as of 2018.

 

he Chipmunk T.10 initially served with Reserve Flying Squadrons (RFS) of the RAF Volunteer Reserve (VR), as well as the University Air Squadrons. During 1958, multiple Chipmunks were pressed into service in Cyprus for conducting internal security flights during the height of civil unrest during the Cyprus dispute. Eight disassembled aircraft were flown out in the holds of Blackburn Beverley transports; following their reassembly, these Chipmunks, which were operated by No. 114 Squadron, were operated for some months into 1959.

 

From 1956 to 1990, the Chipmunks of the RAF Gatow Station Flight were used to conduct covert reconnaissance missions by BRIXMIS over the Berlin area. A number of Chipmunk T.10s were also used by the Army Air Corps and Fleet Air Arm to conduct primary training. Notably, Prince Philip had his first flying lesson in a Chipmunk in 1952; he has declared the type to be his favourite aircraft.

 

Until 1996, Chipmunks remained in service with Air Training Corps (ATC) for Air Experience Flights (AEFs); the final of these AEF flights to use the Chipmunk was No. 10 Air Experience Flight, RAF Woodvale, when they were replaced by the Scottish Aviation Bulldog. The last Chipmunks in military service are still operated by the British historic flights – the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (including one of the Gatow aircraft), the Royal Navy and Army historic flights, to keep their pilots current on tailwheel aircraft. In addition, the cockpit sections of some former RAF Chipmunks have been used as ground training aids; these are colloquially known as "Chippax" trainers.

 

In 1995 and 1996 the RAF planned for a pair of Chipmunks to circumnavigate the northern hemisphere to establish a route for light aircraft from Europe to North America via Russia. The RAF chose the Chipmunk because of its reliability and ability to operate with minimal ground support. Modifications were made before the journey, including expanding fuel capacity and updating navigation equipment. The Chipmunks were accompanied on the journey by a support aircraft. In 1996, the RAF started the journey, but had to stop in Moscow due to forest fires in central Siberia. The RAF successfully completed the journey in 1997, flying 16,259 miles over 64 days, visiting 62 airfields along the way. One of the two Chipmunks was added to the collection at the RAF Museum. The other belongs to a private owner, who has restored the Chipmunk to its condition during the round-the-world flight and flies it to aviation events.

Coventry's Cathedral is a unique synthesis of old a new, born of wartime suffering and forged in the spirit of postwar optimism, famous for it's history and for being the most radically modern of Anglican cathedrals. Two cathedral's stand side by side, the ruins of the medieval building, destroyed by incendiary bombs in 1940 and the bold new building designed by Basil Spence and opened in 1962.

 

It is a common misconception that Coventry lost it's first cathedral in the wartime blitz, but the bombs actually destroyed it's second; the original medieval cathedral was the monastic St Mary's, a large cruciform building believed to have been similar in appearance to Lichfield Cathedral (whose diocese it shared). Tragically it became the only English cathedral to be destroyed during the Reformation, after which it was quickly quarried away, leaving only scant fragments, but enough evidence survives to indicate it's rich decoration (some pieces were displayed nearby in the Priory Visitors Centre, sadly since closed). Foundations of it's apse were found during the building of the new cathedral in the 1950s, thus technically three cathedrals share the same site.

 

The mainly 15th century St Michael's parish church became the seat of the new diocese of Coventry in 1918, and being one of the largest parish churches in the country it was upgraded to cathedral status without structural changes (unlike most 'parish church' cathedrals created in the early 20th century). It lasted in this role a mere 22 years before being burned to the ground in the 1940 Coventry Blitz, leaving only the outer walls and the magnificent tapering tower and spire (the extensive arcades and clerestoreys collapsed completely in the fire, precipitated by the roof reinforcement girders, installed in the Victorian restoration, that buckled in the intense heat).

 

The determination to rebuild the cathedral in some form was born on the day of the bombing, however it wasn't until the mid 1950s that a competition was held and Sir Basil Spence's design was chosen. Spence had been so moved by experiencing the ruined church he resolved to retain it entirely to serve as a forecourt to the new church. He envisaged the two being linked by a glass screen wall so that the old church would be visible from within the new.

 

Built between 1957-62 at a right-angle to the ruins, the new cathedral attracted controversy for it's modern form, and yet some modernists argued that it didn't go far enough, after all there are echoes of the Gothic style in the great stone-mullioned windows of the nave and the net vaulting (actually a free-standing canopy) within. What is exceptional is the way art has been used as such an integral part of the building, a watershed moment, revolutionising the concept of religious art in Britain.

 

Spence employed some of the biggest names in contemporary art to contribute their vision to his; the exterior is adorned with Jacob Epstein's triumphant bronze figures of Archangel Michael (patron of the cathedral) vanquishing the Devil. At the entrance is the remarkable glass wall, engraved by John Hutton with strikingly stylised figures of saints and angels, and allowing the interior of the new to communicate with the ruin. Inside, the great tapestry of Christ in majesty surrounded by the evangelistic creatures, draws the eye beyond the high altar; it was designed by Graham Sutherland and was the largest tapestry ever made.

 

However one of the greatest features of Coventry is it's wealth of modern stained glass, something Spence resolved to include having witnessed the bleakness of Chartres Cathedral in wartime, all it's stained glass having been removed. The first window encountered on entering is the enormous 'chess-board' baptistry window filled with stunning abstract glass by John Piper & Patrick Reyntiens, a symphony of glowing colour. The staggered nave walls are illuminated by ten narrow floor to ceiling windows filled with semi-abstract symbolic designs arranged in pairs of dominant colours (green, red, multi-coloured, purple/blue and gold) representing the souls journey to maturity, and revealed gradually as one approaches the altar. This amazing project was the work of three designers lead by master glass artist Lawrence Lee of the Royal College of Art along with Keith New and Geoffrey Clarke (each artist designed three of the windows individually and all collaborated on the last).

 

The cathedral still dazzles the visitor with the boldness of it's vision, but alas, half a century on, it was not a vision to be repeated and few of the churches and cathedrals built since can claim to have embraced the synthesis of art and architecture in the way Basil Spence did at Coventry.

 

The cathedral is generally open to visitors most days. For more see below:-

www.coventrycathedral.org.uk/

West-German card.

 

Pretty, wide-eyed Austrian leading lady Maria Schell (1926-2005) became one of the first film idols of the European postwar generation. With her ‘smile under tears,’ she appeared in dozens of German and Austrian popular films, but she also starred in British, French, Italian, and Hollywood productions.

 

Margarete Schell was born in Vienna in 1926 as the daughter of the Swiss author Ferdinand Hermann Schell and Austrian actress Margarete Schell Noé. She was the older sister of the actors Immy, Carl, and Maximilian Schell. Her family had to escape from the Nazi regime in 1938, and she received dramatic training in Zurich, Switzerland. To pay for her studies she worked as a secretary. Billed as Gritli Schell, she made her screen debut at 16 in the Swiss-filmed drama Steibruch (Sigfrit Steiner, 1942). It would be six years before she'd appear before the cameras again in Der Engel mit der Posaune (Karl Hartl, 1948). This Austro-German production was simultaneously filmed in an English-language version, The Angel With the Trumpet (Anthony Bushell, 1950), which brought her to the attention of international filmgoers. In the 1950s Maria often played the sweet and innocent Mädchen in numerous Austrian and German films. She starred opposite Dieter Borsche in popular melodramas like Es kommt ein Tag/A Day Will Come (Rudolf Jugert, 1950) and Dr. Holl (Rolf Hansen, 1951). With O.W. Fischer she formed one of the 'Dream Couples of the German cinema' in romantic melodramas like Bis wir uns wiedersehen/Till We Meet Again (Gustav Ucicky, 1952), Der träumende Mund/Dreaming Lips (Josef von Báky, 1953), and Solange Du da bist/As Long As You're Near Me (Rolf Hansen, 1953). She also starred in British productions like The Magic Box (John Boulting, 1951) with Robert Donat, and The Heart of the Matter (George More O'Ferrall, 1953) opposite Trevor Howard.

 

In 1954, Maria Schell won a Cannes Film Festival award for her dramatic portrayal of a German nurse imprisoned in wartime Yugoslavia in Die Letzte Brücke/The Last Bridge (Helmut Käutner, 1954). Two years later, she claimed a Venice Film Festival prize for her role in Gervaise (René Clément, 1956). In this adaptation of Emile Zola’s L’Assommoir, she played one of her best roles as a hardworking laundress surrounded by drunks. Other important films were Robert Siodmak’s thriller Die Ratten/The Rats (1955), and Luchino Visconti’s romantic Fyodor Dostoyevski adaptation Le Notti Bianche/White Nights (1957), with Schell as the young and innocent girl in love with Jean Marais but loved by Marcello Mastroianni. Hollywood called and Maria Schell was contracted to star as Grushenka opposite Yul Brynner in The Brothers Karamazov (Richard Brooks, 1958), a messy adaptation of another classic novel by Dostoyevsky. This was followed by roles in the Gary Cooper Western The Hanging Tree (Delmer Daves, 1959), the remake of Edna Ferber's Cimarron (Anthony Mann, 1961), and The Mark (Guy Green, 1961), opposite Academy Award nominee Stuart Whitman. Then she returned to Germany for the family drama Das Riesenrad/The Giant Ferris Wheel (Géza von Radványi, 1961), again with O. W. Fischer.

 

In 1963, dissatisfied with the diminishing value of the characters she was called upon to play, Maria Schell retired. But in 1969 she made a come-back with the witty French comedy Le Diable par la queue/The Devil By The Tail (Philippe de Broca, 1969) opposite Yves Montand. Then followed two horror films by cult director Jesus Franco, Der Heisse Tod/ 99 Women (1969), and Il Trono di fuoco/Throne of the Blood Monster (1970), starring Christopher Lee. Among her later assignments were Voyage of the Damned (Stuart Rosenberg, 1976), Superman: The Movie (Richard Donner, 1978), Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo/Just A Gigolo (David Hemmings, 1978) with David Bowie and Marlene Dietrich. On TV she portrayed the mother of Nazi architect Albert Speer (Rutger Hauer) in Inside the Third Reich (Marvin J. Chomsky, 1992). She also played Mother Maria in the TV sequel to Lilies of the Field called Christmas Lilies of the Field (Ralph Nelson, 1982), and she did guest appearances in popular crime series like Der Kommissar (1969-1975) starring Erik Ode, Kojak (1976) starring Telly Savalas, Derrick (1977-1978), and Tatort (1975-1996). Besides being a film star; Maria Schell appeared in plays in Zurich, Basel, Vienna, Berlin, and Munich, at the Salzburg Festival, and she went on provincial tours from 1963. Among the plays she performed were such classics as Shakespeare's Hamlet, Goethe's Faust, and modern classics such as Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. With her brother, Maximilian Schell Maria only appeared in one film, the thriller The Odessa File (Ronald Neame, 1974). In 2002 Maximilian made a documentary about her called Meine Schwester, Maria/My Sister, Maria, in which he documented how her mental health deteriorated along with her finances during her later years. In 2005 Maria Schell died at age 79 of heart failure in her sleep. She was twice married, first to film director Horst Hächler and later to another film director, Veit Relin. She was the mother of actor Oliver Schell and of actress Marie-Therese Relin, who is married to Bavarian playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz and has three children. In 1974 Maria Schell was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Germany's Cross of Merit) and in 1977 the Filmband in Gold for her impressive contributions to the German cinema.

 

Sources: Stephanie D'Heil (Steffie-line), Guy Bellinger (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia, AbsoluteFacts.nl, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Jesus before Pilate (mixing technology on canvas, 2011): Ernst Fuchs (1930 in Vienna, 2015 in Vienna). Painter, sculptor, architect, poet. Master of the Vienna school. Lived in Vienna.

 

Jesus vor Pilatus (Mischtechnik auf Leinen, 2011): Ernst Fuchs (1930 in Wien, 2015 in Wien). Maler, Plastiker, Architekt, Dichter. Meister der Wiener Schule. Lebte in Wien.

 

The Museum of the Dreamers

The Phantastenmuseum is a museum in the Palais Palffy in the 1st district of Vienna Inner City. It shows the evolution of fantastic, surreal and visionary art of the postwar period to the present.

History

Following discussions between the Austrian artist Ernst Fuchs (* 13. Februar 1930 in Wien; † 9. November 2015) and the publisher, organizer and author Gerhard Habarta the idea of a museum of fantastic art in Vienna came to the realization. The "Austrian Cultural Center since 1958" in the Palais Palffy was enthusiastic about the idea, the plans for the new museum were concretised in the year of 2010. In autumn 2010 was started with the adaptation of the premises, which was completed in January 2011. The opening of the museum took place under the patronage of Federal President Heinz Fischer on 15 January 2011.

Premises

For the museum parts of the historical Palais Palffy due to war damage in the 1950s renovated were used.

The foyer was designed by Lehmden student Kurt Welther about The Marriage of Figaro. Here, also a lobby with the ticket office, the information and the museum shop has been set up. In this one gifts like replicas of famous works of art, sculptures, jewelery, catalogs and posters as well as original editions are sold. On the 1st floor is located opposite the Figaro Concert Hall the gallery. It is a 150 m² large space for solo exhibitions. The museum occupies the entire top floor and consists of designed spaces. In addition to works from its own collection and permanent loans, documents and portraits of artist personalities are shown.

The museum

The museum is divided into the following areas:

Impulses: Here are the inspirations identified which brought the young artists first information after the war, with works by Edgar Jené and Gustav K. Beck and Arnulf Neuwirth.

Academy: Here, the young creatives found an artistic home, including works by Albert Paris Gütersloh, Ernst Fuchs, Fritz Janschka, Anton Lehmden and Kurt Steinwendner before he turned into the filmmaker and object artist Curt Stenvert.

Contemporaries: These include older artists of fantastic, who had survived the dictatorship, like Greta Freist, Kurt Goebel, Charles Lipka or the CIA agent Charles von Ripper. And the young ones, as Rudolf Schoenwald or Arnulf Rainer as well as painters who moved in later Art Club. These include the "partisan" Maria Biljan-Bilger, Peppino Wieternik before he turned to the abstract, and Carl Unger who designed a large glass front of the Palais Palffy.

Art Club: It gathered the artistic elite of the post-war period and became with the Strohkoffer (straw suitcase) a social center.

Dog Group: It became the first counter-movement, in which the rebels as Ernst Fuchs, Arnulf Rainer and Maria Lassnig, Wolfgang Kudrnofsky and maverick visionary Anton Krejcar with graphics that today have become valuable manifested themselves.

The Pintorarium of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Ernst Fuchs and Arnulf Rainer fought actionistically with wall newspaper and nude demonstration against the established Academy, bad architecture and for the freedom of the spirit.

Hundertwasser realized the theories of Pintorarium in his buildings. A photo documentation of Kurt Pultar.

Vienna School of Fantastic Realism: The core of the museum with pictures of Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hutter, Fritz Janschka, who lives in the United States and Anton Lehmden. Of Rudolf Hausner is - in addition to an oil painting - the documentation of long-term work on his Ark of Odysseus to see. In addition to an early work by Ernst Fuchs, a specially created for the museum great painting version of a 55 years ago arosen drawing is shown.

In the department of simultaneous 16 images of that Viennese Fantasts can be seen who presented themselves in the 1960s for the first time, among other things, in the gallery that installed Ernst Fuchs.

In the Department Next Generation are those almost still "young ones" which - despite temporary exclusion by the avant-garde - are committed to the new tendencies of the fantastic. They studied partly with Hausner, Lehmden, Hutter and Fuchs and also learned as wizards.

The Graphic Cabinet presents some etchings and lithographs to stamps. Here the global network is shown in about 30 works by international visionaries. Representatives from Japan, the US, Australia and European centers are the ambassadors of associations of fantastic artists, the Ambassadors of the Fantastic Universe.

 

Phantastenmuseum

Das Phantastenmuseum ist ein Museum im Palais Pálffy im 1. Wiener Gemeindebezirk Innere Stadt. Es zeigt die Entwicklung der phantastischen, surrealen und visionären Kunst von der Nachkriegszeit bis zur Gegenwart.

Geschichte

Nach Gesprächen zwischen dem österreichischen Künstler Ernst Fuchs und dem Verleger, Organisator und Autor Gerhard Habarta entstand die Idee zur Verwirklichung eines Museums für phantastische Kunst in Wien. Das „Österreichische Kulturzentrum seit 1958“ im Palais Pálffy zeigte sich von der Idee begeistert, die Pläne für das neue Museum wurden im Jahr 2010 konkretisiert. Im Herbst 2010 wurde mit der Adaptierung der Räumlichkeiten begonnen, die im Jänner 2011 abgeschlossen wurde. Die Eröffnung des Museums fand am 15. Jänner 2011 unter dem Ehrenschutz von Bundespräsident Heinz Fischer statt.

Räumlichkeiten

Für das Museum wurden Teile des historischen, aufgrund Kriegsschäden in den 1950er Jahren renovierten Palais Pálffy genutzt.

Das Foyer wurde vom Lehmden-Schüler Kurt Welther zum Thema Figaros Hochzeit gestaltet. Hier wurde auch ein Empfangsbereich mit der Ticketkasse, der Information und dem Museums-Shop eingerichtet. In diesem werden Geschenke wie Nachbildungen berühmter Kunstwerke, Skulpturen, Schmuck, Kataloge und Kunstdrucke sowie auch Original-Editionen verkauft. Im 1. Stock befindet sich gegenüber dem Figaro-Konzertsaal die Galerie. Es handelt sich um einen 150 m² großen Raum für Einzelausstellungen. Das Museum nimmt das gesamte Obergeschoss ein und besteht aus gestalteten Räumen. Neben den Werken aus eigenem Bestand und Dauerleihgaben werden Dokumente und Porträts der Künstlerpersönlichkeiten gezeigt.

Das Museum

Das Museum ist in folgende Bereiche gegliedert:

Impulse: Hier werden die Impulse aufgezeigt, die den jungen Künstlern erste Informationen nach dem Krieg brachten, mit Werken von Edgar Jené und Gustav K. Beck und Arnulf Neuwirth.

Akademie: Hier fanden die jungen Kreativen eine künstlerische Heimat, mit Werken von Albert Paris Gütersloh, Ernst Fuchs, Fritz Janschka, Anton Lehmden und Kurt Steinwendner, bevor er zum Filmemacher und Objektkünstler Curt Stenvert wurde.

Zeitgenossen: Dazu zählen ältere Künstler des Phantastischen, die die Diktatur überlebt hatten, wie Greta Freist, Kurt Goebel, Charles Lipka oder der CIA-Agent Charles von Ripper. Und die Jungen, wie Rudolf Schönwald oder Arnulf Rainer sowie Maler die sich im späteren Art Club bewegten. Dazu gehören die „Partisanin“ Maria Biljan-Bilger, Peppino Wieternik, bevor er sich zum Abstrakten wandte, und Carl Unger der für das Palais Pálffy eine große Glasfront gestaltete.

Art Club: Er versammelte die künstlerische Elite der Nachkriegszeit und wurde mit dem Strohkoffer ein geselliges Zentrum.

Hundsgruppe: Sie wurde zur ersten Gegenbewegung, in der sich die Aufrührer wie Ernst Fuchs, Arnulf Rainer und Maria Lassnig, Wolfgang Kudrnofsky und der Außenseiter-Phantast Anton Krejcar mit heute wertvoll gewordenen Grafiken manifestierten.

Das Pintorarium von Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Ernst Fuchs und Arnulf Rainer kämpfte aktionistisch mit Wandzeitung und Nacktdemonstration gegen die etablierte Akademie, schlechte Architektur und für die Freiheit des Geistes.

Hundertwasser verwirklichte die Theorien des Pintorariums in seinen Bauten. Eine Fotodokumentation von Kurt Pultar.

Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus: Der Kern des Museums mit Bildern von Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hutter, dem in den USA lebenden Fritz Janschka und von Anton Lehmden. Von Rudolf Hausner ist - neben einem Ölbild - die Dokumentation der langjährigen Arbeit an seiner Arche des Odysseus zu sehen. Neben einem Frühwerk von Ernst Fuchs ist auch eine eigens für das Museum geschaffene große Gemälde-Fassung einer vor 55 Jahren entstandenen Zeichnung ausgestellt.

In der Abteilung der Gleichzeitigen sind 16 Bilder jener Wiener Fantasten zu sehen, die sich in den 1960er-Jahren zum ersten Mal präsentierten, u.a. in der Galerie, die Ernst Fuchs installierte.

In der Abteilung Next Generation sind jene fast „noch Jungen“, die sich – trotz zeitweiliger Ausgrenzung durch die Avantgarde – neuen Tendenzen des Phantastischen verpflichtet fühlen. Sie haben zum Teil bei Hausner, Lehmden, Hutter und Fuchs studiert und auch als Assistenten gelernt.

Das Graphische Kabinett stellt einige Radierungen und Lithographien bis hin zu Briefmarken aus. Hier wird in etwa 30 Werken internationaler Phantasten die weltweite Vernetzung gezeigt. Vertreter aus Japan, den USA, Australien und europäischen Zentren sind die Botschafter von Vereinigungen phantastischer Künstler, den Ambassadors of the Fantastic Universe.

de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantastenmuseum

Wolseley 6/90 Saloon at Blenheim Palace 1957

 

Collection: Oxfordshire

Date: 1957

Reference Number: C075325

 

To enquire about any of our images or for more information, please contact photo@britishmotormuseum.co.uk or visit our photographic website at www.motorgraphs.com/.

vehicles included are Sherman and willy jeep

Pop music for Europe! Pic Blanc and "Radio Andorra" postwar historic infrastructure at Port d'Envalira, Encamp parroquia, Vall d'Orient, Andorra, Pyrenees

 

Must be back on air! Legendary "Radio Andorra", famous private music emitter of 20th century 1939-1981. Do you remember announcer "Aquí Radio Andorra!“? Editorial work had been done down in Encamp. Check our actual "Radio Andorra" image results: www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=8013880%40N06&sort=dat...

 

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Architect: Lloyd Ruocco (1954)

Location: San Diego, CA

 

This home in the Mission Hills neighborhood of San Diego will soon be for sale, listed by a friend of mine, Keith York.

 

H Simpson & Son Hardware and pet shop in Burringham Road, Scunthorpe is a place I've passed a few times on visits to the town. However, on this particular trip, and despite the poor light and rain, I decided it was high time that I got a picture of this almost unspolit postwar shop.