oil, canvas, 40 × 55 cm light frame
Signed l. d.: "Muter"
Provenance:
- DA Rempex, 189 Auction of Works of Art and Antiques, 23.01.2013, item 132.
- Private collection Aldona and Wojciech Olejnik Collection
- Private collection, Poland
Exhibited:
- "Between Montmartre and Montparnasse," Silesian Museum in Katowice 24 June - 15 October 2017, repr. p. 290.
Reproduced:
- Between Montmartre and Montparnasse, Works by Polish artists active in Paris between 1900 and 1939 from private collections, (exhibition catalog), Lublin 2017, ill. 284.
The artist repeatedly painted her works double-sided. In the later years of her career, she used the canvases of her early compositions. And this is the case of the work presented in the auction catalog
"Mela Muter admirably served Polish painting through the most conscious assertion of her own personality imaginable "[...] She was, above all, one of those strong individuals, one of the most outstanding explorers of national art. To this alone she owes the fact that she is counted among the "École de Paris." Thanks to France, she became simultaneously an outstanding representative of 'Art vivant' and a great Polish painter [...]." A. Salmon, Le peinture de Mela Muter, "Pologne Litt&aire" 1933, no. 87, p. 5 (translated from French - B. Nawrocki)
In her work, Melania Muter eagerly reached for the motifs of landscapes, still lifes, but it was the portraits that became the true painting showcase of the artist, valued by both critics and the public. Muter's portraits can be divided into two galleries. The first is paintings in which the artist adoringly immortalized anonymous figures of children, elderly women and men stigmatized by an often harsh working-class life, beginning with her first artistic journey to the Brittany coast. The second gallery, are paintings of a more representative nature, where Melani's models included some of the most prominent figures from the world of science, culture, politics, and she was posed by, among others: Leopold Gottlieb, Władysław Reymont, Auguste Rodin, Diego Rivera, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Leopold Staff and many others. Mela was able to show, in her characteristic way, not only the external appearance of the portrayed, but also his personality, although the artist herself did not agree with this statement - "... when you say, trying to make me a compliment - you create psychological portraits - I rebel! No, I don't paint psychological portraits at all, I don't even know what it takes to create a psychological portrait. I never ask myself whether the person in front of my easel is good, false, generous, intelligent. I try to capture and portray her, as I do with a flower, a tomato or a tree, to get into her essence; if I succeed, I express myself through the prism of her personality..." ("Collection of Bolesław and Lina Nawrocki, Mela Muter (Maria Melania Mutermilch) 1876-1967.", Exhibition Catalogue, National Museum in Warsaw, December 1994-February1995, Warsaw 1994, p. 35).
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