Lowery Expo, 1994

After the closing of the Paris exhibition in 1993, Howard Lowery, renowned Disney animation art specialist, along with his wife Paula - a former Disney studio archivist - and the Basmajians collaborated to stage an exhibition featuring examples of original Disney artwork from items that hadn’t been consigned to the historical 1984 Christies auction in New York. Many of these pieces were framed by John Basmajian during the next few years, after the Christies’ sale, up until his death in 1989.

The exhibition was scheduled to be held September 9 through October 8, 1994 at the Howard Lowery Gallery in Burbank CA. It was to have a theme: “Vamos Siempre Unidos” – translated,” We Are Always United”. It was based on a statement of Walt Disney’s; “When the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs asked us to make “Saludos Amigos” we had one purpose: to make a picture both Americas would like so that in the end they would like one another better.”

In 1941, the year America entered into to World War II, Walt Disney went “on location” to several Latin American countries as America’s goodwill ambassador. With fifteen people from his studio and a 16mm camera they set out to learn and document all they could about the USA’s Latin American neighbors. His two feature films, “Saludos Amigos” (1943) and “The Three Caballeros” (1945) are a direct result of that trip.

All the original artwork on loan from the Basmajians for this exhibition was created by Disney artists and was used in the making these two films. Of particular interest were the two oil paintings on celluloid by artist Mary Blair which were seen as still frames of ‘picture postcards’ in the Mexico City sequence of “The Three Caballeros” - the use of oil paint was rather unusual because the rest of the production paintings were rendered in water based colors!