Jerome Witkin, Proof that a Cat is a Snake with Fur, from the Patrick Eddington Cat Project, ca. 2004

Jerome Witkin

Proof that a Cat is a Snake with Fur, from the Patrick Eddington Cat Project, ca. 2004

Marker on paper

Boldly signed by Jerome Witkin on the front

Frame Included

This is unique drawing on paper by renowned painter Jerome Witkin. Provenance: Estate of Patrick Eddington. Patrick Eddington was a Utah school teacher who had the improbable idea of writing to his favorite artists and asking them to draw or paint pictures of cats. “This project is a labor of love," Eddington wrote of his endeavor in a 2004 letter. “It will culminate as a large book and traveling exhibition. It will also help Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. I’ve asked individuals I admire to create cat-related works. They are not the typical cat images but creative works.” Patrick Eddington passed away in early 2016 and his vision was, unfortunately, never realized. Nonetheless, artists like Keith Haring, William T. Wiley, Roy de Forest, Kiki Smith, Marcel Dzama, Robert Crumb - and Jerome Witkin, who created the present work, were amused and inspired by the project - and agreed to participate.

Measurements:
Frame:
22.25 x 19.5 x 1.5 inches
Drawing:
11 x 8.5 inches

About Jerome Witkin:
Jerome Witkin is recognized as one of the most formidable contemporary figurative painters. Critically, Jerome Witkin generates notable praise, as exampled by the L.A. Times citing his work to be "a break-through in post-Cold-War art." The San Francisco Chronicle's Kenneth Baker cites that "Witkin's only peer is Lucian Freud.... Witkin is one of the finest realist painters working today... he stages pictorial dramas that grapple with contemporary historical crises and moral pressures, while offering a lavish physical display of his medium.... " Witkin's works can be found in the permanent collection of prominent museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Jerome Witkin is represented by Jack Rutberg Fine Arts in Los Angeles.

Witkin was born on September 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, NY to a Jewish father and a Roman Catholic mother and has a twin brother, Joel Peter Witkin, who is a photographer. His parents were unable to transcend their religious differences and divorced while Witkin was still young. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Cooper Union, the Berlin Academy, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Witkin’s art often deals with death, perhaps because of his many experiences with it as a child. When Witkin’s father died at age fifty, after living several years homeless on the streets, Witkin decided he wanted to understand his father better. He began exploring his Jewish roots and read extensively about Jewish history, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust. His interest culminated in his twenty-three year series of Holocaust themed paintings.

Witkin is considered to be one of today’s great narrative painters and is unafraid to deal with political themes. His paintings have focused on assassinations, torture, and the AIDS crisis, though he is most famous for his series on the Holocaust. The realistic depictions were designed to overwhelm the audience with their historical reality. Critics regard Witkin’s Holocaust series as the most compelling of paintings made on the subject.

Witkin is a professor of art at Syracuse University in upstate New York, and has had his paintings shown in over one hundred exhibitions since 1966. His works are also found in many permanent collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn, and the Uffizi, a Florence art gallery that is the most famous one in the Western world.

Provenance:
Estate of Patrick Eddington