Roman Kramsztyk (1885 Warsaw - 1942 there), Portrait of a Woman

lithograph, paper, 26.5 × 22 cm in light passe-partout
Signed on panel p. d.: "Kramstyk"

Analogous print reproduced in:
Roman Kramsztyk 1885-1942: monographic exhibition, Zachęta Gallery of Contemporary Art, February-March 1997, ed. Renata Piątkowska, Magdalena Tarnowska, item 51, p. 230.

An analogous print to the one offered at auction is in the collection of the Jewish Historical Institute (inv. no. A-1035/2). Similarities in physiognomy allow us to believe that most likely the same model posed for the artist for the oil painting "White Negress," part of the collection of Moscow's Pushkin Museum (cf. Roman Kramsztyk 1885-1942: monographic exhibition, Zachęta Gallery of Contemporary Art, February-March 1997, ed. Renata Piątkowska, Magdalena Tarnowska, item 152, p. 204).

"From the very beginning of his work, the most important subject for Kramsztyk was man. Over time, the portrait (less often figural compositions) began to definitely dominate the painter's oeuvre and is its most interesting part. In the portrait gallery created over the years by the artist, we find images of friends, family, writers, actors and painters, as well as society ladies, ministers, prime ministers, children, as well as "exotic types" - Negroes and Easterners: Chinese and Japanese."
Piatkowska R., Between "Ziemiańska" and Montparnasse: Roman Kramsztyk, Warsaw 2004, p. 99

"In portraiture," the artist said in an interview with the Red Courier, "I am primarily concerned with revealing, with bringing out the painterly content inherent in the model. Hence comes the fact that my portraits are not actually so-called likenesses, since the figure or human head in them is only the organic content of a certain compositional whole strictly subject to the general laws governing it. (...) For I strongly emphasize that I am only interested in the painterly, not the literary side of the model or subject. That is why each of my paintings is a composition, not a copy of nature."
quoted by Piątkowska R., Between "Ziemiańska" and Montparnasse: Roman Kramsztyk, Warsaw 2004, pp. 99-103