Foreign Language Press Service

Revyen, the Student Singer's Automobile Procession and the Devil

Revyen, May 20, 1911

p.1.....Revyen's Facade, 2639 West North Avenue, will greet the students great automobile procession next Monday, with a picture of the red Devil himself in the shape of the slender figure of Mr. Nissen. We have asked the ablest young artist in Chicago, Christian Abrahamsen from Bergen, Norway, to draw the picture.

Christian Abrahamsen recently won the honor prize of the Chicago Art Institute's exhibit, with a small painting of Ole Bull's grave near Bergen. It indicated such real genius that even Bocklin might have been proud to have his signature on it.

When the second greatest Spanish painter of our times, Bastida Y. Sorolla viewed 2the exhibit, he stopped in front of Abrahamsen's painting. "Who painted that?" he asked. "I must see that man." For two days he tried to locate Abrahamsen, and when he finally found him he grabbed both his hands and his eyes sparkled like the sun bathed wave tops of his own pictures. Sorolla spoke in Spanish of things in Spanish, of which Abrahamsen did not understand a word, and it was not until the following day that he read in the Chicago Record Herald what Sorolla had said: "Christian Abrahamsen, you are a genius! Some time your name will shine among the greatest."

That is the Christian Abrahamsen who is painting the Devil on Revyen's Facade.

We know one ought not to "paint the Devil on the Wall," but take a look at him anyhow." - And shudder!

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