The Last Player Left Standing

Erv Kaczmarek 1939-2014

Erv was possibly the last Renaissance man.  Loved by all.  May God give him the benefit of the doubt....Tom Horn 
 

All great men are enigmatic. Erv certainly qualified. One of the original San Miguel artist settlers who made Mexico his home. Easily the best painter in San Miguel, a town overflowing with painters, he developed an abstract style unique to Erv, yet every work was unique unto itself.  A devoted Husband and Father, he's survived by his wife Lupe, his son Miguel, his daughter Marcela, his brother Robert who lives in Hawaiii, two grandkids, and a group of admiring friends. And almost a year ago to the day, he lost another grandson to a tragic accident. 
 

Erv came to San Miguel when he was 22. He left Milwaukee on a dime with 2 friends in an old Chevy and drove non-stop to San Miguel. He had studied art in the US, but that world was simply too limiting to contain him. He had heard of the Instituto and when he arrived, slept on it's lawn the first few nights. That was 1961, and he never left.  He survived almost 55 years , raising a family in the process, educating his kids, living in Mexico by his creativity and wits,  unlike those that come today with their retirement accounts and pensions. Doing whatever he could in the early years to make an honest buck,  he designed sets, made fake antiques, sold handmade crosses and masks,  bought artesanas for one of the larger stores, and finally became the best painting teacher in San Miguel at Bellas Artes. A dedicated mentor, he always found something interesting in his students work, and he never had a student he couldn't point in the right direction. But always painting,  making his mark. His home is like entering an ancient shop combined with a museum. Even after visiting him for 25 years, I still see art I'd never noticed before. Hundreds of paintings and objet d'art. A virtual display of the man himself. 

He raised a beautiful family in an old house on Santo Domingo. He bought it with dollars he brought taped and tied around his waist. In the 60's he played baseball with Stirling and his team winning a few tournaments in the process, and after buying the Santo Domingo house, became Stirling's neighbor as well. Things were different in those days, a little like the wild west. He played poker with Neal Cassady the night he died,  Erv and one of his many best friends, Jim Hawkins and some others. These guys were the real deal. Erv was the real deal. I was lucky to have known him and Jim. 

Jim once told Erv and I that first come the artist, then the gallery owners , and finally the millionaires. We all know which phase San Miguel's in now, but Erv was smart enough to be one of the reasons why San Miguel became a famous "artist colony" to begin with. Without those few like Erv, those that chose to make their stand , living, working and playing, San Miguel would have missed the first phase that put it on the map. I guess we call men like Erv....modern-day pioneers.

I was incredibly blessed to arrive to San Miguel 25 years ago and rent an old 3 story casa antiqua next door to Erv. By the time I arrived, he had already been in San Miguel for almost 3 decades. So not only was he all of those things I describe, to me he was a great neighbor and a friend.  His oldest grandson Leonardo was just a toddler running down the pasaje. I remember the first time I looked over his wall to see the pasaje decorated with dozens of his handmade crosses made by him and his wife Lupe. It was like the real Mexico right out of a D. H. Lawrence novel. I knew I was in exactly the right place. 

But beyond Erv Kaczmarek the local cultural icon, was Erv the artist. He loved painting,  and he made luxuriously beautiful canvases. And I say that as someone far too critical of artist and artwork in general, which is why I said "easily the best painter in San Miguel". And all of his friends, many of them artists as well, fully agree. If he had been more of a promoter and had been willing to live in one of the big city art centers, he would have been a phenomenal success. And in San Miguel terms, he was a sanmiguel success. He told me at least 10 years ago that he had sold over 400 works since he began painting. That's pretty phenomenal for an artist who didn't care if he showed, or not. 

There have been others that came before him, and multitudes that came after, but there has been no other gringos more archetypal of the artist in Mexico...the artist in San Miguel. He was the last of the original gringo artist-settlers. How brave a man, to leave home at 22, move to a foreign land and reinvent himself in such an amazing way, as an artist in the truest sense of the term. He never compromised his vision, and he accomplished this for more than a half a century. He was the last player left standing. He was irreplaceable.

Kurth Bousman 2014