Eugene Fitsch Art

Eugene Fitsch was born in Alsace-Lorraine, France, on December 11, 1892, and came to the United States at the age of 21. Trained as a bookbinder, he worked at the Buffalo Public Library and received his first art training at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. He was awarded a one-year scholarship to the Art Students League and studied painting and sculpture. Upon completion of his studies, Fitsch began a successful career as a scenic painter and set designer. He also took evening classes in printmaking at the Art Students League under Mahonri Young. Upon Young’s resignation in 1924, Fitsch was appointed instructor in etching and lithography, a post which he held for the next 10 years. Fitsch also spent summers working at the Old Lyme Art Colony during the 1920s. In 1930, Fitch began his long association as a scenic designer for the summer season of the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts, where he worked with many of the leading actors and artists of the period. Fitsch chronicled the golden age of New York theater and dance from behind the scenes. He portrayed many of the important early modern dancers including Harald Kreutzberg, Martha Graham, Charles Weidman, the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, Helen Tamiris and Esther Junger. Scenes from original theatrical productions figure prominently in his artistic output, including plays by Eugene O’Neill, E. E. Cummings, and directors Robert E. Jones, Max Reinhardt, and Walter Hampden Dougherty. After 1930, Fitsch increasingly portrayed the New York cityscape and themes concerned with the Depression in both lithography and painting. In 1936, he founded the American Artists School. Critically acclaimed during his lifetime, Fitsch's works were widely shown and acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, as well as museums in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, London and Paris.