Table of Contents
Return to New York (1938 - 1940)
Greenwich Village (I940 - 1950)
Trinidale: Country Living (1950 - 1959)
Return to Trinidad: Beauty and Horror Both (October 1959 - May 1960)
New York: Blossoming in the Nothingness of the City (May 1960 - March 1961)
Heaven: Trinidad a Scented Soft Couch (April 1961 - February 1962)
Retreat and Return (February 1962 - February 1964)
Resettling in New York (February 1964 - March 1967)
New Career: The Elmhurst Hospital (March 1967 - October 1972)
A Madison Avenue Gallery (November 1972 - April 1976)
“Kidnapped” and Sent to Trinidad (April 1972 - October 1977)
The Final Years (October 1977 - June 1982)
Greenwich Village
1940 - 1950
In the early 1940s he met Wilton Owen, who worked for a design company, possibly Scalamandre, and Hugh began designing wallpaper patterns for him. He also met John Pearce and his partner, Rylen Gage, who formed the nucleus of the group that remained friends with Hugh for much of the rest of his life. In 1941 he moved into an apartment with Rylen and John in Greenwich Village for a time living alternately with them or his brother in Forest Hills until he moved to his own apartment on Commerce Street in Greenwich Village in 1942 or 1943.
He painted murals on the walls of the apartment in a style that combined his paintings of women with serpentine and sexualized vegetation of the late 1930s with more abstracted approaches to the figure that emerged in the early 1940s. They also reflect a knowledge of the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera in certain parts. The goat /trickster figure is prominent.
In 1945 or 1946, Hugh met Arthur Repkin. There was an instant attraction between the two men and they decided to live together. Arthur was the one sustained romantic attachment of Hugh's life. Arthur moved into the Commerce Street flat with Hugh. Later on, perhaps about 1948, they moved up-town to a flat at 213 West 60th Street.
When Arthur was discharged from the army, he took a course in physical therapy and met Iona Swift when they were both working at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. He introduced her to Hugh and the two of them became very close friends. It is through Hugh's correspondence with Iona that we know of life and thought through the 1950's and 1960's.
His theme and variation approach to work is very much in evidence in the work from the early '40s until this time and is very much influenced by music both Classical and Jazz. The compositions are often full of jagged complex rhythms, and strident acid colours. As is often the case with Hugh the paintings are stylistically varied, ranging from highly abstract to realistic, although this realism sometimes takes its cue from the figures from Picasso's classical period.
