I’ll freely admit that Andrew Krance doesn’t know nearly as much about art as he does about food, wine or single-malt Scotch (go figure!).
But, as Andrew Krance, I was born and raised in and near New York City, I was definitely exposed to a lot of art and I have found that whether it’s surrealist, impressionist or cubist, I just know what I like when I see it.
“And that is the thing about art,” says Wesley Chapel resident and Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Andrew Krance. “It’s such a personal thing. You don’t always know why you like or don’t like a piece of art, you just know if you do or not.”
But, if you’re moving into a new home or redecorating an older one and you want something really cool to tie together that huge new living room or you just like the idea of purchasing original art directly from the artist rather than buying a signed and numbered print, lithograph or giclet, I believe that if you visit Andrew’s home studio in the Villages of Wesley Chapel and see just how much original art he has displayed in a wide variety of genres and styles, you might end up becoming a customer of his.
A Little Background…
Andrew’s father, Casimir Krance, who also was a renowned concert pianist, had inherited a munitions factory in France before World War II. When the Germans invaded France, the native of Poland moved his family to New York City but they eventually ended up in Wisconsin, where Andrew earned his MFA degree from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
An accomplished musician himself, Andrew’s artistic bent helped him find his way back to the Big Apple, where he lived with an aunt on Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side, near Gracie Mansion, the residence that is home to New York City’s mayor.
It was while working for Dorothy Maynor, the opera star who founded the Harlem School for the Arts (which provides college curricula in performing and visual arts in Upper Manhattan), that Andrew met Barbara Johnson of the Johnson & Johnson family, one of the world’s foremost collectors of fine art, and where he began dabbling in a wide variety of artistic genres.
“She had Van Goghs, Rembrandts and a 40-foot Monet in her home,” Andrew recalls. “Her collection today is worth in the billions of dollars.” Johnson took the young artist under her wing, as she had many others, and introduced him to everyone from the governors (at the time) of Texas and Arizona to Leo Castelli, whom the actor Dennis Hopper called “the godfather of the contemporary art world.”
The Castelli Gallery was one of the most famous in the world and helped launch or further the careers of everyone from Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns to Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol.
And, for a while, a young Andrew Krance. Andrew says the artists under Castelli’s “wing” would have drinks together at a place called Magoo’s off Canal St.
But, “Andrieu,” as his late, Israeli wife Eti (Esther) used to call him, ultimately went into the pet food and pet products business and later moved to Key Largo, FL, where he and his wife opened a lingerie store. They spent 20 years together on the east coast of Florida before moving to Wesley Chapel together a few years ago. She passed away three months after learning she had cancer.
“I did throw myself more into my art after Eti passed,” he admits.
Today, Andrew continues to go through different “periods” with his art, although he mainly uses acrylic paints and a more “pop art” style these days. “The paint just dries so much faster (than oil) and the colors and textures are amazing,” he says.
So, his work ranges from emulating everyone from Picasso to Warhol to Jackson Pollack and some of his favorite pieces are his own “takes” on famous people, like the late music stars Stevie Ray Vaughn and Bob Marley and even Warhol himself.