Raymond Toloczko

1925-1972
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Raymond Toloczko was born in Chicago on the 3rd of September 1925, on the city's west side. his mother  was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and his father in Vilna, Lithuania.
 
After serving two and one half years in the U.S. Army Air Corps, under the G.I. bill, he attended the DePaul University and the school of the Chicago art institute, receiving his B.A.E. in 1951. With traveling scholarships and grants he studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting, Maine, and the instituto  Allende, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. Since that time, he has made many trips to Mexico, living and working in that country for some five years on the sales of his paintings. He has also spent a year of travel in Europe, and made his studio headquarters in Venice, where he painted for six months. his exhibitions in Europe, Mexico and the United States have been received very favorably by the critics. Prizes from the Chicago artist annuals of the Chicago Art Institute include the Robert Jerkins memorial prize, the Pauline Palmer award and the town and country prize. He has won many prizes in the Polish Arts Club, and has exhibited with various groups in many exhibitions. 

REVIEW:
The talent of Raymond A. Toloczko blazed like the bright yellow suns that sometimes filled the skies of his paintings. And when he died, in 1972 at 46, he left a legacy of vivid canvassed and intricate drawings that do what art does best: take the imagination on a wild chase of daydreams, beauty, and – often with Raymond – laughter.
He was at Yaddo, the Saratoga Springs, NY, a nest of the famed in the creative arts.  And at the Chicago Art Institute.  He painted in Venice, in Poland, and in Mexico, where he went to completed a 15 x 40 foot mural and ended up falling in love with the country and staying several years.  He taught art a Loyola University, Chicago, form 1968 until his death in 1972; His murals at Loyola University are in the Union Hall and the Mullady Theater. His work received top awards, was sought by both public and private collectors, and was a popular subject for news interviews and discourses.
Toloczko’s work runs the gamut of human happenings, existences and feelings.  His early work in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, all brilliant color and sweeping stark line, brings a feeling of Van Gogh.  Complex scenes are executed in lavish color embroidered in black.  Then and later in colors were a his own, inks and yes mixed together until he found the vibrant hues the lens of his imagination demanded.
Many of his painting reveal a deep religious commitment. Several churches, particularly in the Chicago area, commissioned murals and windows by Toloczko.  Save for an occasional wayward angel, he drew sacred art without joking.  All else could fall victim to his whimsy.
In Poland, he filled a sky above elaborate old buildings with brilliant yellow sun. Copernicus holds what appears to be a long window opener to it, as though adjusting it for the day.  He drew Chopin’s birthplace with great detail.  Finely drawn lace curtains frame an angel playing the piano.  A lovely scene. But look again.  The angel wears a mask.
His wry wit put elephants along with people in the Grand Hotel.  And for “Paulina’s Masked Party,” he chose two figures: a veiled lady holding a dog masked with pieces of intricate-designed old lace.
Detail in drawing is the mark – as much as glowing color – of a Toloczko.  A castle roof will show every shingle in minute exactness.  But if you peek into the castle windows, you may see hordes of tiny, naked people – usually pink – looking out at you.
He won many awards. One, from the Kosciuszko Foundation, was for a watercolor sent on a tour of the United States and the exhibited at the American Embassy in Poland.  The painting is the stylized “Angels Having a Picnic on a Polish Mountain Top.”  These angels do not eat any old thing, they dine on recognizable Polish culinary specialties – mushrooms, cabbage, sausages and stuffed dumplings.
His Huge mural, “The Phoenix” was exhibited by the prestigious Skowhegan School in Maine (to the art world what Tanglewood is to the music world) at the New York World’s Fair. Toloczko also had several shows at "Cliff Dwellers"  sponsored by Joseph Shapiro who wrote of him... "A lifetime of searching for beauty and hidden charm around us. He found what he was seeking, again - again- and again...and his discoveries enriched us al"
Art critics liked to write about Toloczko, and his exhibits in Chicago were rich fare for reviewers in both Chicago papers and Glossy Sunday supplements.  Don J. Anderson in Chicago opined that maybe Toloczko drew the sun so much “because its brilliance is a constant magnet and challenge for him and his shocking palette of pigments.
Harold Haydon labeled him, in one of numerous articles in the Chicago Sun-Times, as “an artist thoroughly involved in his own style and esthetic hang-ups…an imaginative draughtsman with a strong feeling for decorative effects.”  He also saw him as a man “with something to say.  With the portrait of a man with a monkey on his head, (“Agony in a Sunflower Garden”) he is trying to tell us something.”
Frank Holland, also in the Chicago Sun-Times, called his talent “stunning.”
Holland liked the Toloczko touch that used black for an all-over sort of embroidery or for linear grids and structures upon which to place his rich colors, such as in his “Acapulco At Night.”
“In other canvasses, “he wrote, “the artist departs from his blacks, as in ‘Mexico City at Night,’ with confetti-like suggestions of glowing lights in yellows and picks arranged under a dark heavy sky. Jean Bryan People Editor