Jean Varda, Sausalito’s iconic waterfront Bohemian, was a well-established artist long before he came to town. In the early 20th Century, he was considered a child prodigy in Europe. After moving to Paris, the young painter was a companion of Picasso and Braque. In 1939 he visited Big Sur and decided to move there, making friends with Henry Miller and Anais Nin.
By the time he discovered Sausalito in 1947, Varda was primarily producing very colorful collages made from found textiles and other materials. But perhaps his most inspired creation was his own lifestyle. One columnist wrote that Varda’s affirmation of life led him “away from the museums, away from ART as a specialization and toward art as a way of life.” |
Varda channeling Poseidon aboard the Vallejo. Photo courtesy of Sausalito Historical Society |
| Varda’s fanciful collages inspired similar flights of fancy from critics and friends. The Los Angeles Free Press commented, “through color, texture, and the 1,000 senses of the artist, Jean Varda reproduces a vibrant sense of life... His birds, fish, women and cities are an affirmation, a celebration. And yet at moments he also communicates an awareness of the deep seriousness of beauty – it restores – and the observer becomes a widow who finally puts a rose in her black hair.” |
| In “To Paint is to Love Again” Henry Miller wrote: “To enter a gallery in which Varda’s collages are exhibited is an event in one’s own life... No painter, however riotous his palette, can even obtain the results which Varda does by putting together pieces of paper, cloth or whatever material he chooses to use... With all his strength, his wit, his courage, he has fought against muddiness. For him, Satan is pure black. The lesser devils are browns and grays. His god, I am tempted to say, is gold... it is not Byzantine gold, though Varda is certainly Byzantine, if he is anything, no it is the gold of the alchemists, a product of the most subtle powers of transmutations.” |
| The same foraging skills that inspired his artwork led Varda to discover an old ferryboat at Arques shipyard. He and a partner offered the owners $500 down for the Vallejo and agreed to payments of $60 a month. Then they purchased a strip of land and underwater lot at Gate 5, and arranged to have the ferry towed there, where it can still be seen from the side street now called Varda Landing Road. They remodeled the Vallejo using building materials that were readily available in the Marinship. There was a waterfront tradition that no one paid their bills and Varda was recognized as an instigator of that custom. |
| Varda held a housewarming party in March 1950 on the Vallejo, which was attended by friends and artists from throughout the Bay Area, according to the Sausalito News. Soon “Uncle Yanko” became as well known for his parties as his art. |
| In 1961, Zen philosopher Alan Watts and his wife began sharing the Vallejo with Varda – and soon the old ferry became the epicenter of the waterfront counter-culture, or what has been called the Sausalito Bargeoisie. |
| In a tribute published shortly after Varda’s death in January, 1971, author and Varda confidant Herbert Gold recalled that when it came to parties, “Any excuse would do, so long as it was a day devoted to dancing and music.” Gold added: “If Varda came, it was a party, and the masques, rituals, dances, performances, puppet shows, plays always made it a celebration of this intensely benign old presence... Girls, flutes, guitars, wine, fun, laughter, food, textures, surprises, colors, delights; that's what a world should be. And painting. And above all, the sun. Who wouldn't adore a man who lives for such good sense?” |
Larry Clinton, who lives on a floating home at Gate 6 1/2, is the President of Sausalito Historical Society.
Jean Varda is featured in The Sausalito Historical Society’s new exhibit “Artistic Sausalito, ” along with original works by other artists from the 1940s and ’50s who gave Sausalito its reputation as an art colony, including Enid Foster, Peggy Tolk-Watkins, Walter Kuhlman, Ruth Alexander, Val Bleeker, Ed and Loyola Fourtane, Nan Fowler and Ted Christensen.
The exhibit is open to the public Wednesdays and Saturdays, 10 AM – 2 PM at the Historical Society Gallery, Sausalito City Hall, Second Floor. |
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