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.INTERVIEW WITH LEO COSTELLI      9-9-9

thousand dollars that today would probably close to one million. So for a very long time after I liquidated Paris, [[strikethrough]] a [[\strikethrough]] there was some sort of activity going on, I would be ... I was in the army during the war, I got back here in 1946, it was three years, in the American Army, not the French anyway because I was Italian. So for three years I tried to keep some sort of a dialogue between New York and Paris but [[strikethrough]] I was ? [[/strikethrough]] finally it just didn't work, I didn't have the material. Do you know that I sold splendid Kandinskys [[strikethrough]] at [[/strikethrough]] to the [[strikethrough]] Battle of Rebai [[/strikethrough]] Baroness R... but really the only one 1917 and I thought I had achieved a high price, of $4,000. which by the way sold in London at an auction for $150,000. But that was the situation here, you could sell Kandinskys here to one or two persons but that was all.

MRS.V.: What was the name of your gallery in Paris? 

MR.C.: It was called the Drouin Gallery, and it was a beautiful place, like between the Ritz and Schiapparelli there. But then I left there and really, I had nothing of money, or college? whatever, and really you couldn't do it. But I did have some joint ventures with other people, especially Sidney Janis, and we did quite a few things together. [[Strikethrough]] Also [[/strikethrough]] Quite interesting shows like , for instance; in 1950 we had a comparative show of French and American painters. So we compared opposite numbers, like Gorky and Matta which are quite obviously, DuBufy who did those big figures, and DeKooning who had just started doing the Woman paintings, and the rest...Some juxtapositions that would seem very odd now. Like DeStile and Rothko but DeStile didn't paint the way that we now know him best. And there was an analogy, but in 1950 there was no Rothko as we know him now. And there was the very violent, Pollack. And that occurred first here, and then went to the gallery La France in Paris. Of course it was received very badly here by the critics critics, Lindberg and Charlie Egan who were absolutely pure and would not like anything that was "wrong." But it was an interesting show. Then there were things that were more interesting financially speaking, like the Forbes in the early period. We bought quite a few before the things reappeared in 1951, and had a show of those. Just to give you an idea of what the prices were, still in 1950 I found that Noerdlers, he was looking for Matisse and so on and so forth, I found at Noerdlers a magnificent Braque nude, beautiful, seen from the back, and I paid him two thousand dollars and Braque. Then we had the 
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