Margaret Marley Modlin (January 5, 1927 – October 28, 1998) was an American surrealist painter, sculptor and photographer who spent most of her adult life in Spain.
Biography
Margaret Marley was born in
Robeson County,
North Carolina.
Elmer Modlin and Margaret Marley were married in North Carolina in 1949 then moved to Hollywood to find their fortune.
[Josefa Paredes (July 1, 2012) "En busca de una historia para los Modlin" (in Spanish), El Confidencial. Retrieved 2014-01-30.] They had one son, Nelson, who was born in 1952. Elmer Modlin appeared in TV show
Bewitched and the 1968 film,
Rosemary's Baby.
They left the United States in 1972 to seek better prospects, arriving in
Madrid, Spain, in 1975.
[Susana Hidalgo (June 21, 2004) "A la espera de un mecenas" (in Spanish), El País. Retrieved 2014-01-30.] Margaret Modlin is credited with acting parts in the 1973 film
Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing[ Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing, IMDb] and the 1977 film,
March or Die.
[ March or Die, IMDb]
Artistic career
Modlin stayed at home creating her artworks while her husband and son found paid work.
The household, in a house on Calle de Pez, revolved around Margaret the "eccentric painter".
The artist used her son and her husband like models to create
surrealist scenes about the
Apocalypse with a
Mesianism message. Modlin's paintings and drawings have been exhibited in California, New York City, Italy and Spain.
[ Elmer N. and Margaret M. Modlin Papers (#4977) 1987, 1996 (Collection overview), Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library (UNC).] In 1972, she exhibited at Galeria de Luis in Madrid, Spain, and, in 1978, at the Círculo de Bellas Artes,
the first foreigner invited to exhibit.
Modlin didn't sell a painting in her lifetime but hoped to find a place in art history.[ "The best book of the year / El mejor libro del año", Spanish Academy of Language and Translation, Edinburgh, January 16, 2014.] She died in 1998, stipulating in her will that her paintings remained in Spain. Her final painting, of poet José García Nieto, was only half completed.
Los Modlin
After the death of her son Nelson in 2002 and her husband Elmer Modlin in 2003, Margaret Modlin's 120 paintings and personal effects remained in their dilapidated building, which the
El País newspaper described as "a house-museum full of cracks and illuminated only by the colorful paintings."
In June 2003 photographs, family movies and personal items about Modlin family were discovered in the street and Spanish photographer Paco Gómez began to piece together the story.
In November 2013 he published a book,
Los Modlin, based on the subsequent investigation about the family.
