About Totte

Meeting Totte Mannes

There's something about Totte Mannes that makes one think of the movies, of Cannes and St Tropez, of minor European royalty, fast cars and luxury yachts.

I had only met her once before, at a private view when - in what I now realise is trademark Mannes style - she swept aside the person I was talking to, took me over to a painting and proceeded to systematically comment on its every weakness in a voice just loud enough to be overheard, one hand held as if preventing ash from an invisible cigarette from dropping on the floor, her husband Eero translating quickly into perfect idiomatic English. And then it was someone else's turn: she vanished as quickly as she had arrived, leaving an unforgettable image of poise, culture, and sheer overpowering charisma.

So getting an invitation to visit her and Eero in their apartment in the centre of Madrid was a little nerve-wracking, to say the least. I had at least done my homework, reading the exhibition catalogues from her numerous group and solo shows, scouring the internet for reviews, visiting friends who have her pieces hanging in their houses.

But, of course, nothing prepares you for the real thing. And for a woman who reminds one of the movies, it is not surprising that their apartment is like a film set, all clean white walls, stylish furniture, intriguing curves and angles. One half expects Omar Sharif to be relaxing on the sofa. This is where Totte Mannes lives, works and displays her art. In fact, the art has taken over: there's a small bright studio, and two whole rooms of the apartment are devoted to storing her work. And that's a real strength, because it means that the art can be seen as the artist intended it to be, and if you like one piece, there's others from the same period only a few rooms away.

The apartment is also a useful retrospective, showing work from the earliest years through to the work in progress on the easel in her studio. The links, when the work can be seen in large like this, become clear, the gradual transition from movement, breadth and air and space; to the finely detailed, tightly articulated, jewel like fineness of her most recent work like the Venezia series.

We spend hours in her apartment, pulling one work after another from the stacks, thinking and talking and planning what you now see here: a website which attempts to bring together the whole range of Mannes' work, from her first explorations of nature to her overtly political, personal responses to current events, from the sheer horizon-spanning enormity of her Sails pieces to the detailed obsessiveness of the recent work, from single pieces to diptychs, triptychs and more multi-part works like the Calendar.

It is dark when we are through. We leave to go to dinner, three of us (the ever patient Eero included) trailing in her wake like paparazzi after an actress. In another very typical moment, she refuses to enter the restaurant when she sees the 'No Smoking sign', turning quickly on her heel with a swirl of clothes (I imagine again, as so often with Totte, the flash bulbs of invisible newspaper photographers capturing her every expression), mollified only when the maitre d' rushes after her and guides her towards the smoking area. Whereupon she is again charm and charisma, laughter and smiles. There is great strength, delicacy and natural power in Mannes' work. Thereagain, there is great strength, delicacy and natural power in Mannes herself.

Jonathan Blanchard Smith, 2009