Victor Haboush Bio and Contact information:

Although his work in animation has always been highly regarded? from the great Disney films of the 1950s to Warner Bros.' recent The Iron Giant ? Victor Haboush has not been know as a serious painter.

Haboush had always intended to be a painter. After WW 2, he enrolled at Art Center, in Pasadena, where he was a student of Lorser Feitelsen. After he left Art Center, he continued to study privately, Feitlesen for the next fifteen years. And they remained close friends until Feitlsen's death. But marriage and children intervened, and he accepted an offer from Disney Studios.

In Feitlsen's class at Art Center, Haboush met Eyvind Earle, who be came another life-long friend, and whom he collocated with at Disney Studios. Reminiscing about that time, Earle says that "every painting the 23 year-old Victor) started was a masterpiece the first half hour, and then started going down hill& He became my closest friend."

Haboush and Earle also worked with Tom Oreb, and the three of them were part or the team that wan an academy award for the 1953 animated film, Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom. Feitlsen and Earle continued their friendship with one another, as well as Haboush, and did their best to keep Haboush painting, always asking about his latest work. In his autobiography, Earle says&

the few individuals [at Disney's] who were actually artists and Disney artists second, were very few& . Victor Haboush is a real artist even though he seldom paints any paintings except in his spare time, maybe once or twice a year.

At age 80, Haboush is on a tear, hell-bent to fulfill the promise he manifested sixty years ago. His zaftig ladies show the Feitlsen influence. His groupings of jazz musicians show the Oreb influence, resounding from their canvasses in cutting contests that seem audible; and his low-life characters might have been conceived by George Grosz, if that artist had lived in a softer, less threatening time. But Haboush is very much his own man. From zany cows taking over the world, to trees that evolved from his original drawings and compositions in Sleeping Beauty which Earle rated "among the finest work done on the picture " Haboush is fresh and insightful.