1960 John Alton Surrealist Oil Painting of Cosmic Fruits and Vegetables

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John Alton (American, 20thc.) Cosmic Fruits and Vegetables, 1960, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left, framed. Bearing Art … Read more John Alton (American, 20thc.) Cosmic Fruits and Vegetables, 1960, oil on canvas, signed and dated lower left, framed. Bearing Art Services, Los Angeles label verso 25 in. x 30 in. canvas size, 26 in. x 32 in. as framed.

John Alton, A.S.C. born 1901, Sopron/Ödenburg, Austria-Hungary, Died in Santa Monica, California, USA, 1996, was an American cinematographer, writer and painter. Alton won an Academy Award (Oscar) for the cinematography of An American in Paris (1951), becoming the first Hungarian-born person to do so in the cinematography category. Starting at MGM as a lab technician in 1924, Hungarian-born Alton became a cameraman within four years. He went to Europe with Ernst Lubitsch to film backgrounds for The Student Prince (1927) and ended up staying in Paris for a few years heading the camera department of Joinville Studios. Alton moved to Argentina in 1932 to design the country's first sound film studio. He spent seven years there and returned to Hollywood with a dozen films under his belt, a directorial credit for Papa's Boy, an award for best photography from the Argentine film industry and a wife, journalist Rozalia Kiss -- they would remain married until her death in 1987. Perhaps an early exposure to German Expressionism during his European childhood affected him, for Alton showed special affinity for highly contrasted black and white photography and unusual camera angles designed to symbolically enhance and sometimes mock the onscreen action. Such techniques made him ideal for film noir. Throughout the '50s, Alton was in and out of MGM due to numerous disagreements of political and personal natures with various studio executives. When he and director Charles Crichton were abruptly released from Birdman of Alcatraz in the midst of production Alton decided to permanently quit the motion picture industry. Instead, Alton spent his days travelling, writing books on photography and working on his painting. In the 1970s, a new generation discovered his film work, but Alton remained elusive until 1993 when he resurfaced and attended a tribute for him at the Telluride Film Festival. After that, Alton showed up at a tribute in Vienna and for a retrospective at New York's Museum of Moving Image. See less