~Original Vintage 1970s DAVID DEACON JONES Painting~

 ~NFL LA RAMS Los Angeles Football Club~ 

This is an original 1970s One-Of-A-Kind painting.

The signed 1970s painting is in very good vintage condition. The wood frame is a bit weathered from normal age and storage .The painting is also dusty/slightly soiled also from age. We have made no attempt to clean or restore the DAVID DEACON JONES painting in any way. 

We are selling it AS IS and in the condition that it was found.

 It is an original oil and acrylic painting by Nikita Knatz. He wrote a letter dated February 16th, 1972 to the LA RAMS FOOTBALL CLUB addressed to DEACON about the painting. 

(See close-up picture of letter posted.) 

This original typed letter will be included as provenance for this DAVID DEACON JONES painting.

The art was purchased from the estate of Nikita Knatz in Studio City, CA.

The actual art painted canvas measures approximately 36"X 24" 

The entire piece including the wood frame measures 37" X 25" X 1 1/2".

Thanks for looking. Please See information about the estate of Nikita Knatz below.

Thank you for looking.

If you have any further questions, please ask.

$95.00 FED EX GROUND includes Insurance in the US & $Global Worldwide Shipping

Estate of Nikita Knatz 

“ Nikita Knatz was a talented artist and one of the most in-demand in modern cinema and television. Knatz worked occasionally as an actor, second unit director, associate producer and production designer, but he made his mark on the entertainment business as a production illustrator/conceptual designer/storyboard artist. Knatz has more than 100 films and television credits to his name, including many Academy Award-winning motion pictures, box-office hits and large-scale productions such as In The Heat of the Night, The Thomas Crown Affair, Le Mans, The Towering Inferno, Black Sunday, The Hunter, Escape From Alcatraz, Ordinary People, Terminator, Predator, Commando, Moonstruck, Independence Day and Sister Act.
A Russian native, Knatz’s artistic style was heavily influenced by the trying circumstances surrounding his upbringing. His family fled St. Petersberg during the Russian Revolution and settled in Revel, Estonia, where he was born on May 2, 1940. During World War II, they fled from advancing Soviet troops and spent the war years in European refugee camps. He and his mother immigrated to the United States in 1949 and settled in San Francisco, becoming a large part of the émigré community. Knatz’s talent was apparent at an early age, and his caricatures, designs and illustrations were featured in school newspapers and yearbooks at Lowell High School, City College and San Francisco State. Because of his fluency in the Russian language, Knatz was hired in 1965 by producer-director Norman Jewison for his Academy Award-nominated film, The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming. Jewison took notice of Knatz’s exceptional skills as a sketch artist, and brought him into the Illustrators and Matte Artists Union to do the storyboards for his next two projects – The Thomas Crown Affair and Gaily, Gaily. He once explained his role to a reporter, “I take the written word and visualize it by the way I define it, by the way the director wants to see it and ultimately how it’s supposed to end up on the screen.”
1968 was a pivotal year for Knatz both personally and professionally. He married Patricia Keller that August and shortly thereafter was hired by Steve McQueen’s Solar Productions. His first assignment was for a proposed epic action flick called Yucatan, considered by film historians as McQueen’s “lost classic”. In 1970 he worked on location for Steve McQueen’s racing classic Le Mans as the film’s official visual designer. Knatz pulled double duty on the picture by directing a 14-minute “making of” featurette called Le Mans: The Man, The Movie. The next several decades continued to be prosperous for Knatz, who was one of the most in-demand storyboard artists in the industry. In more recent years he worked on Bad Boys, Clear and Present Danger, The Fast and the Furious, Spiderman, Collateral Damage, Dragonheart, XXX, and the television cult smash Lost.
Knatz was also active in his professional development as a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the Art Directors Branch and Directors Guild of America. He also served on the Executive Board of the Illustrators and Matte Artists Union. Outside of his work Knatz was a dedicated martial artist; a lifelong San Francisco 49ers fan and fresh water fisherman. He was known for his wit, humor and sense of fun. “It’s in my will that my headstone shall read: ‘He never wanted to grow up and never did.’”  Knatz passed away on Jan. 6, 2010 and is survived by Patricia, his wife of 41 years, and his daughter, Christina " -mecun