Ettore DeGrazia, 73, Burned Paintings to Protest Taxes - New York Times
September 18, 1982
Ettore DeGrazia, 73, Burned Paintings to Protest Taxes
UPI
Ettore De Grazia, an Arizona artist who in 1976 protested taxes by burning
paintings he valued at $1.5 million, died today of cancer. He was 73 years old.
Mr. De Grazia's paintings of Indians and Western subjects, featuring soft
pastel-like colors, won national acclaim. He made headlines in 1976 when he rode
by horseback into the rugged Superstition Mountains of central Arizona to burn
100 of his paintings to protest United States tax laws.
Mr. De Grazia said he burned them because the Internal Revenue Service, by
comparing his work with market values, made him ''a millionaire on paper and my
heirs will have to pay taxes for which there is no money.''
Surviving are his wife, Marion; two brothers, Greg and Frenck, and two sisters
Virginia Lien and Giselda Canaday.
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