Werner Wildner (Nashville, Tennessee, 1925-2004) oil on masonite painting titled, Girl Bewitched, depicting a young girl with blue eyes and wearing a green garland necklace, her left hand raised upward, against a stark desert landscape background. Signed lower left Wildner. Exhibition label en verso for the 1999 Vanderbilt University Fine Arts exhibition titled, LIGHT AND DARK: THE FANTASTIC WORLD OF WERNER WILDNER, Oct 28-Dec. 17, 1999. Housed in a molded giltwood frame. Sight – 5 3/4″ H x 6 7/8″ W. Framed – 10 3/8″ H x 11 1/2″ W. Circa 1950-1960. Provenance: The estate of Dr. Benjamin H. Caldwell, Nashville, Tennessee. Biography (courtesy Askart: The Artists’ Bluebook): Wildner was born in Germany but moved to Detroit with his family as a child and then, as a teenager, to Nashville. He served in the Army in 1944 and went on to study art briefly at the Meinzinger Art School in Detroit. He returned to Nashville to practice commercial art, but by the mid-1950s had decided to pursue his own art career. Whimsical animals and fantastical, often grotesque creatures were a recurring theme of his work. Wildner met with critical and commercial success after a 1962 exhibit of his art at the Nashville site now known as Cheekwood. However, the death of his parents and collapse of his marriage in the 1970’s led him to become reclusive in the last two decades of his life. CONDITION: Excellent condition.