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Lot description
WITOLD GORDON (1885-1968) Abstract portrait of Donald Deskey and family. Gouache on board, circa 1930s. 381x610 mm; 15x24 inches, sight. Signed "Witold Gordon" in pencil, lower right image. Framed to 23x32 inches, with inscription shown through window on verso. A lovely abstract portrait in blues, greens, and neutrals, painted for the artist's good friend and colleague, designer Donald Deskey. The verso is Inscribed and Signed by Deskey's son, Michael upon gifting it to the present owners: "This, in my family from the 1930's, shows my father, an avid fisherman, my mother, a pianist, and we two boys, Michael & Stephen, on a seesaw. Michael Deskey, 18 Nov 2006." Witold Gordon was a Polish-born American Art Deco painter best known for his murals in Radio City Music Hall completed in 1932. He painted a 6,000 square foot mural for the 1939 New York World's Fair and a series of New Yorker covers depicting the city in its recent past. He also designed the poster for the original Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1943). Prominent American designer, Donald Deskey, coordinated the painting of murals at Radio City Music Hall and commissioned Gordon, among the period's foremost avant-garde artists, along with Stuart Davis and William Zorach, to create two of them. A long friendship between their families ensued.