Andrew Romanoff: Life Work at Gallery Route One
Andrew Romanoff would have been in line to be Russian tsar had circumstances been a bit different. Romanoff, who has had an amazing journey through his long and remarkable life, is the great-nephew of deposed Tsar Nicholas II. With the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918 and the execution of Nicholas and his family, King George V extended an invitation to his cousin Duchess Xenia, Andrew’s grandmother and sister of Nicholas the II, to live at Frogmore Cottage—the 23 room guesthouse on the grounds of Windsor Castle. Andrew Romanoff was born in Great Britain, and raised there as a Russian prince.
After somewhat of a storybook childhood at Frogmore, rambling in the gardens and eating chocolate Easter eggs intended for the British royal princesses, Andrew was sent to attend a military academy and soon learned to navigate the world without privilege. Romanoff served in the Royal Navy during World War II, enlisting at the age of 18 and serving on the HMS Sheffield. After the war he worked in farming and other professions for a while in England before moving to the US at the invitation of family members, settling in California in 1949. His connection to nature led him to the bucolic coast of Marin County, where he met painter Inez Storer. The couple married in 1987, and Storer’s dedication to her craft inspired the artistic side of her new husband.
Andrew’s unusual medium of choice is the Shrinky Dink, a crafts technique more commonly associated with children. This medium consists of sheets of translucent plastic upon which one may paint, and then bake in the oven until they are greatly reduced in size. Romanoff likes to share that the manufacturer has presented him with a “lifetime supply” of the material, in honor of his art. Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station recently presented an exhibition “Andrew Romanoff: Life Work” featuring many of the artist’s Shrinky Dink paintings, in addition to works on paper and canvas, photographs, and as well as some little-known sculptural works.
Romanoff has a playful, expressionistic style, favoring bright colors and a quirky, energetic line. Early works include scenes from his childhood. Growing up on the grounds of Windsor Castle provided fertile material for narrative works and a series of Shrinky Dinks illustrating a book about his early life, The Boy Who Would be Tsar (2006). Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Andrew portrays the young artist on a stroll down a wooded garden path with a trio of rabbits, the image of the castle hovering above the scene on the left. Other autobiographical scenes recount his time in the navy, such as HMS Ganges Training Base where the architecture and geometric design of the battleship, masts, and rigging form a solid compositional underpinning to this more serious work.
A video, Yours Truly Prince Andrew Romanoff (2016) directed by Sam Hayes, presents the artist reminiscing about his heritage and his then-daily ramblings through the beautiful scenery of West Marin, often searching for mushrooms…chanterelles and boletes; Storer confirms that his reliable knowledge of the species yielded delicious morsels to share with family and friends, and even to sell to some of the Bay Area’s most prominent restaurants. She as well shares that when would-be mushroom hunters brought their dubious-looking finds to the house for identification, Andrew would rather dryly comment “I don’t think I would eat those.”
Reflecting on the Russian Revolution, and his active service in World War II, among other major upheavals, Romanoff remarks that he has witnessed all these grand, significant events—and there is something poetic about shrinking these in the oven. He feels his work is both serious and funny at the same time which, he says, is “very Russian.”
Fly Over (c. 2014) presents a rotund female figure, clad in a blue dress, hovering over a landscape. While initially humorous, the image actually conveys the artist’s concerns about Russian aggression, worries heightened by the Russian invasion into Ukraine in the news at the time. Romanoff kept informed about world affairs, particularly those involving Russia, and these would often filter into the work. If there is much of the joyous and primitive in the work, like Raoul Dufy or perhaps Chagall, there is equally an incisive and darker satirical undercurrent, more like George Grosz.
Morning Commute in Firenze (2012) is the signature work in the exhibition, with an assortment of colorful characters zipping down the road on scooters. As with most of Romanoff’s work, concern with perspective is thrown to the winds, and the narrative of the work propels the viewer into a dynamic space where a long-haired character in polka-dot jumpsuit steers a lime-green scooter to some unknown destination, presumably the endpoint of the commute. Storer and Romanoff spent a lot of time in Italy, with frequent invitations to teach or create art extended to them. Inez recalls that while she was teaching in Florence, Andrew would go off with “the men” to have coffee and talk about politics and other issues. She also remarks that the main figure resembles the artist Sam Francis, who made his home in West Marin at the end of his life.
An accomplished gymnast, sports and physical fitness were always of utmost importance Romanoff, and the last series of Shrinky Dinks he created in 2018 portray an assortment of robust standing male figures, wearing seagoing or military attire and in some instances accompanied by balls and cricket bats. These figures are a bit mysterious, but certainly suggest an autobiographical aspect. While no longer able, at 97, to create his Shrinky Dinks, he was continuing to do collaborative “exquisite corpse” type drawings up until the COVID-19 shutdown made that impossible.
The most unusual work in the exhibition is a table-mounted sculpture The World After the Destruction (c. late 1980s) in which he grapples with issues of extinction and conveys an apocalyptic feel. Menacing creatures with the bodies of snakes and the heads of birds, carved from wood, emerge from a barren landscape of spindly trees painted white at the base, red on top. The piece not only predicts climate change, but also is infused with Romanoff’s impression of our country as increasingly due for its own revolution of the oppressed.
A wall-mounted collage of newspaper clippings highlighted his life and his work, his marriage to Storer, and provided a tribute to his rich activities and accomplishments. Photos from his youth, and throughout his later life, reveal his striking appearance and regal bearing, qualities that have endured late in life even as other abilities have faded. With his unique position in the history of Western Civilization, and his enduring relentless eye and good humor, the Bay Area has been fortunate to have Prince Andrew—and his delightful artwork—call our part of the world his home for so many years.
Andrew Romanoff: Life Work closed in October at Gallery Route One.
https://galleryrouteone.org/2020/09/andrew-romanoff-life-work/
(Andrew Romanoff passed away on November 28, 2021, surrounded by his family. He was 98 years old.)