Junior's World

For the Naples Art Association, the art of Carl Hertzberg Jr. has always held a special place-one that will be revisited when an exhibition of his paintings and latch-hook rugs opens at the von Liebig Art Center on June 25. (The exhibition runs through Aug. 6.)

Junior, as he was affectionately called by all who knew him, was a longtime NAA member and Naples resident who loved to paint. But his path to becoming an artist was different from most. Born in the 1930s with debilitating injuries that hampered his physical and mental development, Junior was nevertheless fortunate enough to have parents determined to see that he led a full, rich life, one that included exposure to the arts. His mother, herself a painter, saw to that by giving him his first box of paints, traveling with him to many different inspirational locales and, for the most part, leaving him to develop his own eye for color and characters rather than attempting any formal training.

The result: Junior's own unique world of watercolors, peopled by imagined creatures both animal (fish, ostriches and butterflies among them) and human-like. "His work has many of the elements of the self-taught artist," says von Liebig acting curator Jack O'Brien, "bold colors, somewhat simple techniques and compositions. Painters like this are going to record and tell you exactly what they're seeing. There's no use of perspective, but he was accurately portraying his world as he saw it. There's a wonderful truthfulness [present in Hertzberg's works]."

And Junior continued to represent his world for decades, with such abundance that a number of his pieces haven't been seen or shown publicly before. The von Liebig show offers approximately 60 works once owned by his mother, family friends and collectors such as Olga Hirshhorn, including 11 large rugs that also bear images of his bird-people and other whimsical inventions. All in all, it's a rich legacy stemming from a parent's love and commitment to a challenged but visionary son.

For more information on the exhibition, call (239) 262-6517.