Legacy of a creative spirit
Exhibit features late Austrian artist who landed in valley via Mexico
Joan Brodovsky is selling the rest of her husband’s stark landscape paintings, and when the last one goes, a fascinating story of courage, survival, human flight and the power of second chances may end, but with the flourish it deserves. As she pointed to a large canvas in the living room of her chic San Jose apartment, Brodovsky said, “You don’t see Point Lobos like that in most paintings,” referring to California’s Central Coast, one of the prettiest spots on the loveliest coastline in the world.
But the canvas on her wall, equally stunning and arresting, featured a token cypress tree set against a turbulent sky, gnarly brush and sharp branches. The sea is barely visible. It’s the real Point Lobos. Entrancing from a distance but treacherous up close.
Bruno Schwebel, her late husband, used to say, “My phi-
losophy in painting is to portray the strength of a landscape, not necessarily its beauty.”
A retrospective and sale of 52 Schwebel paintings and drawings is being presented at the Institute for the Study of Western Civilization in Cupertino. This genuine Renaissance man— television pioneer, painter, author, actor and chess champion— is revered by an unlikely pair of nations: Mexico and Austria. In fact, sponsors of the sale include the consulates of those countries.
Schwebel died in 2011, at age 82— five years after he reluctantly followed his wife to Silicon Valley, 32 years after they married in Mexico City and 69 years after he landed there as a frightened, artistic Jewish refugee kid from Nazi- occupied Austria. In Israel, he was known as one of the last living refugees saved from the gas chambers by the “Mexican Oskar Schindler.”
Here in the twilight of life, Schwebel helped immigrants, taught chess to children, hunted for Vienna worthy coffee and pastries and continued painting landscapes. One fan is Kathy Welch, a Cisco Systems manager who fell in love with a typical “Bruno,” a wintry agricultural setting with a hint of spring.
“It is a stark landscape, his signature style,” Welch said. “That’s what I find so peaceful. It is powerful, hopeful and tranquil.”
Loved Mexico
A worried friend appeared at the Schwebel family’s door in Neulengbach, Austria, the day after Nazi mobs went berserk on the infamous “Kristallnacht” in November 1938. The visitor warned Theodor Schwebel, a labor union official and the father of Bruno Schwebel, to flee or else he’d be sent to the Dachau concentration camp. Ten- year- old Bruno and his mother joined his father and older brother in southern France a few months later.
Safe for a while, the boy studied at the famous Montauban Municipal Art School, but the breather didn’t last long. Hitler took France and the puppet Vichy government prepared to round up Jews.
Gilberto Bosques Saldivar, Mexico’s ambassador to France at the time, defiantly doled out visas to 40,000 Jews and Spaniards fleeing fascism. Enraged, the Gestapo arrested Bosques, his family and 40 staffers and held them for a year in Germany, releasing them only after Mexico arrested German citizens in that country.
Finally safe in Mexico City, the Schwebels struggled mightily but eventually opened a delicatessen and Viennese bakery. Bruno Schwebel studied art for a short while at the renowned Escuela de Artes del Libro, but he ended up pursuing electronics at a technical high school instead.
“If you’re a refugee, you don’t go into art,” Brodovsky said, explaining his priorities at the time. “You go into something that makes money.”
As luck would have it, electronics led him into a new and lucrative field — television broadcasting, which supported his artistic pursuits. He rose from cameraman to engineering director in the gigantic Televisa network and traveled throughout Mexico setting up new studios. His passions, however, led him to roam the countryside for landscapes to paint and hang out in bars with locals, gathering material for his short stories.
“Mexico was the gift that kept on giving,” Brodovsky said. “It is such a varied country. It has everything, from the tropical to deserts and mountains. Bruno took full advantage for his art.”
Schwebel’s job also brought him occasionally to Silicon Valley, where he learned the latest in recording technology at legendary Ampex Electronics and Manufacturing in San Carlos.
Somehow he found the time to act at the famous Foro Shakespeare theater and become the chess champion of Mexico City.
Married with two sons at the time, Schwebel attended a Mexico City party in 1976, where he met a San Jose native with degrees from Stanford University and UC Berkeley. Her name was Joan Brodovsky. She was a consultant for pharmaceutical companies and also was married with two children.
“Eventually, the marriages dissolved on their own,” Brodovsky said. She and Schwebel married in 1981. One secret about the success of their union: They worked in entirely different fields.
“He enriched my life, and I enriched his,” Brodovsky said. “We weren’t stepping on each others toes in the same area.”
The couple lived in the Coyoacan neighborhood, famous for its art and literary scene. But in 2003, with her husband retired and ailing from lymphoma, Brodovsky accepted a marketing job in Silicon Valley. Schwebel wasn’t happy.
“He loved Mexico so much,” she said. “He kicked and screamed all the way up here.”
Unknown painter
Once here, Schwebel pursued the painting of California landscapes, from Yosemite National Park to San Diego. He even captured on canvas Alum Rock Park, San Jose’s tiny crown jewel, as he came to love California. Viennese to the core, he loved hanging out at Esther’s German Bakery in Los Altos, Douce France cafe in Palo Alto and played chess at Orchard Valley Coffee in Campbell. For intellectual fun, he took classes at the Institute for the Study of Western Civilization in Cupertino.
“We didn’t even know he was a painter,” director William Fredlund said, “until somebody said we should look at his work.”
He had sold hundreds of paintings in Mexico and Austria, but no one really knew his work here. An art historian, Fredlund was impressed by the “real beauty” of Schwebel’s landscapes, placing them between the pretty flowers of Matisse and the flatness of Picasso.
“If he had ended up in New York or Los Angeles at age 18, that might have given him a foothold in the art world for a good career in art,” Fredlund said. “He certainly was good enough.”
Brodovsky found solace in hanging the paintings before the show and sale. She’ll keep four favorites in her apartment, but the rest must go.
“He wanted them sold,” she said. “He wanted them out there.”