“I’ll Call This Land Virginia”

Oscar De Mejo, like an artist of the Renaissance, creates series of paintings on historical themes. For the Bicentennial he painted a sequence on the Revolution. In 1985 he was commissioned bv John W. Kluse. founder of Metromedia and a resident of Albemarle County, to paint this series on Virginia to celebrate Mrs. Kluge’s naturalization. Exhibited last year at the Bayly Art Museum in Charlottesville, the paintings bear the artist’s characteristic imprint: strong narrative, inventive composition, and the recurring presence of a flagdraped figure that he says represents “the future America.” The future was to include De Mejo himself who, born in Trieste, became a U.S. citizen in 1952.

—J.C.