Eugène Roy WITTEN (1920-2004) Lot n° 242

Ucello Huile et lavis sur papier, signée en bas à gauche. Titré au dos. 43 x 50 cm Named for U.S. labor organizer Eugene V. Debs, Eugene Roy Witten was born in New York City to parents of Jewish ethnicity. His father was a Lithuanian immigrant who had been an active anti-Czarist, and his mother gave up a career as a concert pianist to raise her family. Witten, a Francophile painter and periodic resident of France, died on 13 January this year. Nearly all Witten's work has an undercurrent of rapport with nature and a passion for interaction of soft colors with an occasional bright accent. Since the 1960s most of his paintings were abstract and quite delicate, almost resembling watercolors. After studies in business at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a short period in an advertising agency, "Gene" served as an officer in the U.S. Navy during World War II, with tours of duty ranging from Murmansk to Shanghai. On return he was impassioned to leave "business" and entered the Art Students League in Manhattan. At the age of 25 he decided his life's work was as an artist. Inspired by the work of the Impressionists, in the late 1940s Witten moved to Paris where he partook in the life of cafes and the Montparnasse student boites, and studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. Awakened to Cezanne, Whistler, Degas and, somewhat later, curious about Seurat, Witten worked in a muted palette overlaying his drawings. Confident and experimenting, Witten returned to Manhattan, dividing his energies between a East Greenwich Village studio and a budding picture-framing business with another former expatriate, Robert Kulicke. In New York, Witten made a few sorties into group shows. During some sejours in the countryside at Woodstock NY, his focus concentrated on an exploration of the landscape. Married to another artist (Anita Witten), the couple sought a refuge for a year (1954-5) near the site of Cezanne's studio in Aix en Provence. This exposure to the Proven