Early Fauvism Style Jean Degottex (France, 1918 - 1988) Abstract Still Life Painting in an Integrated RoKo, New York Frame. A beautiful presentation of a Still Life titled "Nature Morte". Painting is in very good condition, just needing a cleaning, with age darkening to the canvas verso. There is slight craquelure visible. Painting is in a great Mid Century Distressed and Weathered frame by RoKo, New York. Painting is signed and dated in the lower middle J Degottex '48. Painting measures 10.75" x 14" sight, 17.75" x 21" overall.About the Artist: Born and raised in Sathonay-Camp in the department of Rhone, Jean Degottex was stationed during his military service in World War II in Algeria and Tunisia, where he began to paint as a self-taught artist. Until 1941 he lived in Tunis and there created his first paintings, pale red landscapes in the style of Fauvism. After the war, he met painters such as Jean Bazaine and Alfred Manessier and developed as a non-figurative painter. In 1949 he first exhibited at the Galerie Denise René in Paris, then one of the leading French galleries for avant-garde art. In 1951 he was awarded the Kandinsky Prize; the following year, the internationally renowned Galerie Maeght showed works from him. In 1954, he left with René Duvillier and Serge Poliakoff at Portsall on the Brittany coast. Down there he created throughout the summer hundreds of Seascapes, the series of so-called "Vagues". From then on he developed a spontaneous painterly gesture crucial for his later artistic work. In 1955, Degottex exhibited in the gallery "L'Etoile scellée", then a disconnection of the Surrealists. Here he met André Breton, who introduced him to the Zen philosophy and in the Far Eastern calligraphy, both crucial Impluse for a radical turn in Degottex 'work. He destroyed as a result, almost all of his previous work. His mature work united the surrealist "automatic writing" with pulses of Asian painting and philosophy. Degottex is now considered one of the most important representatives of the Lyric abstraction.