Danikåa Blest

A faint metallic taste of failure lingered in the mouth of my good friend David Schoffman for many years. His was a particularly bitter type of heartbreak, the kind that mixes disillusionment with a crushing, amaroidal cynicism. Ten shows in ten years and still not a glimmer of recognition. I should hasten to add that the aforementioned decapod of exhibitions involved ten different dealers, a fact that speaks more of David’s tenaciousness than of the range of his contacts.

Danikåa Blest, Currado Malaspina 1998

From the spring of 1992 to the fateful fall of 2001 Schoffman lived in seven cities within four countries on three continents. While working in Barcelona he had a show in Geneva. While painting in Prague he exhibited in Paris and while living in Paris he showed in New York.

You get the idea.

The nadir of his unfulfillment was reached in Rome. It was there that he met the choreographer cum curator Danikåa Blest.

Best known for Hirtius and Caesar, her nine and a half hour marathon radio play, Blest was a major force in what has come to be known as the “Lazio School,” a loosely configured late twentieth  century collective of central Italian poets and playwrights. She commissioned Schoffman to design the sets for her 1998 production of the operetta, Against the Stepmother for Poisoning. When the show was cancelled after only three performances Danikåa secretly sold the sets to recoup her losses. 

David’s luck finally changed with the 2002 publication of Dahlia Danton’s best selling memoir The Palette-Knife Cuts Both Ways. In it she described Schoffman, Apelles and Giotto as her three major influences.

The critics soon took notice.