The art and architecture of Victor Lundy

Come see the collection of Victor Lundy's four Blue Pagoda paintings and learn more about the art and architecture of the man during "Art Talk: Colony Architect and Artist Victor Lundy," Saturday, October 1, 4:00 pm, at the Arts Advocates Gallery. Guest speaker is Dr. Christopher Wilson, scholar in residence of Architecture Sarasota.

Victor Lundy's Blue Pagoda paintings have an interesting history. In 1955, Lundy entered a watercolor of Notre Dame Cathedral into the Sarasota Art Fair, winning best of show. Karl Bickel, a juror of the fair and chairman of the Sarasota Chamber of Commerce search committee, learned Lundy was also an architect and asked him for a building proposal. Instead of a typical architect’s rendering, Lundy created a series of watercolor paintings showing an Asian-styled pavilion with a sweeping celadon blue tile roof. He won the commission, and the Blue Pagoda was completed in 1956. In the early 1980s, the paintings were rediscovered and displayed in Sarasota’s city hall. In 2017, they were donated to the Sarasota Architectural Foundation (SAF) and exhibited during SAF’s SarasotaMOD architectural festival honoring Lundy’s legacy.

In the foreground of one of Lundy’s paintings is a Japanese lantern. This stone lantern was given to the Sarasota Garden Club in 1939 by Ralph Caples. His wife, Ellen, was one of the founding members of the club, along with Mable Ringling, who was the club’s first president. There is speculation that the gift may have been the Caples’ way of marking the 10th anniversary of Mable’s death. Sarasota Garden Club members believe Lundy was inspired by the lantern when he designed the pagoda-like building.

Lundy, born in 1923, served in the Army during World War II and, wounded in battle, he was awarded a Purple Heart. He entered Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, after which he lived and worked in Sarasota from 1951 to 1960. He is an original member of the Sarasota School of Architecture Movement: some local buildings include St. Paul Lutheran Church, Sarasota; Herron House, Venice; and Warm Mineral Springs Motel, North Port. Lundy’s Unitarian Church in Westport, CT (1959-65) and Unitarian Meeting House in Hartford, CT (1962-64) placed him on the national architecture scene. Among his many works, he designed the “Spaceflowers” structures featured at the 1965 New York World’s Fair (1963-64); the U.S. Tax Court Building in Washington, D.C. (1976); the U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka (1984). A book about Lundy’s career, “Victor Lundy: Artist Architect,” was published in 2019 (Donna Kacmar, editor. Princeton Architectural Press). Lundy donated his architectural archive to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. He currently lives in Houston, Texas.

Register for "Art Talk: Colony Architect and Artist Victor Lundy" here.