THE MELZAC COLLECTION

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06797580
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: March 9, 2023
• Document Release Date: January 29, 2021
• Case Number: F-2011-00399

Approved for Release: 2021/01/29 C06797580
(U) The Melzac Collection
UNCLASSIVED
Front himItipeorra
From hitrEfipetha
The Maim Collection is located throughout both CIA's Original Headquarters Building and New Headquarters Building.
The 29 modem paintings at CIA represent an elemental approach to an, a swashbuckling donor, and a correlation to the art movement come -y with the OMB architecture. These
paintings within our cc:acetatel affirm the original intention of DCI Allen Dulles that the CIA be campus-like in character. Such an is a perfect and necessary complement of the multi-
faceted wady:tic mason of understanding ourselves and others. It reinforces the Agency's tunty of purpose and unifying theme. The paintings within our walls and the architecture that
surrounds them complement each other.
'The way the eye perceives color and pattern was the subject of Norman Bruhm, Gene Davis, Howard Mehring. Kenneth Noland, Thomas Downing, Alma Thomas, acid the other anises of
the Washington Color SchooL These artists worked in Washington, DC, at the sallIC time as the better known and more gestural abstract expressionists .kickson Pollock =Min= De
Kooning worked in New Yolk City. The Color School work was part of a new mininalisrn in American art.
For the fast time, color and the now nnterials of painting�paint and the raw, unprimed canvas�became the subject marten. As artist Kenneth Noland advocated, "The thing is to get that
coke down onto the thinnest conceivable surface, a surface sliced into air as if by a razor. It's all color and surface." These artists poured die paint onto the canvas in layers of thin washes
and repealed C0104 in patterns of stripes or dots or rhythmic paint strokes. Standing in front of these paintings, you will sense the rhythm of the layered colors and the movement of the
point Many of the paintings are so large that they tend to absorb the viewer. The collection's patron�de late Vincent Melzac�was a larger-than-life figure. A Washington business
executive who began collecting an at age 16. he collected work by promising new artists and grew to love it. Every major collection in Washington, including the National Museum. of
American Art and the Phillips Collection, eventually benefited from his largesse.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Nklzac mark more contacts in the art world and filled his collection with many winks by the artists represented here at the Agency today. He became the
CEO of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in the early 1970s. lik raised prize cattle and Arabian horses on his West Virginia farm until his death in 1989.
Melzac's first banal art to the CIA came in 1968 when eight large paintings by Norman Mullin, Gene Davis, Thomas Downing and lack Bush were selected by officials of the Corcoran
Gallery to fit the large open spaces of ORB. At that time, he also loaned a sculpture by Giorgio Spaventa it now resides in the Vatican. Mel= also donated sculptor Marc 11*Dart's bust of
George H. W. bush that stands at the top of the stairs of the ORB lobby. his 1982, DCI Casey awarded Metzac the Agency Seal Medallion for his generous support to the CIA.
Paintings Onned by CIA
111
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ARROWS by Robert W. aback Rhwfun by Gene Center Grid by Dapple by Thomas Inside Orange by Mars Rejection by Planks by Thomas
Neumann, 1967 Davis. 1964 'Thomas Downing, Downing. 19591] Norman Bluhm , 1966 Alma Thomas, 1972 Downing 1967
/960
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Untitled "Concentric Untitled "Gray" by Untieled "Orange" by Untitled "Reverse
Squares" by Thomas ktward Nthring, ca. Howard Mehring, 1959 Edge" by Fioward
Downing, 1939 1953-1959 � Mehring. 1960
Paintings on Loan to CIA
Fold-II by Thomas
Downing, 1969
French - 75 by Passing Waterfall by Rudder by Thomas Vitrified "Brilliance" Untitled Untitled "Diagonal"
Norman Blubm, 190 Norman Bluhm, 1939 Downing. 1965 by Howard Nkhring, "Calligraphy" by by Howard Rekhring.
ca. 1958 Andrea Epstein, 1939 ca. 1958
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Annroved for Release: 2021/01/29 C06797580