Zygmunt Menkes, STILL NATURE WITH ANANAS, before 1936

65,0 x 55,3cm - oil, canvas

Signed p.d.: Menkes

On the reverse on the canvas, opposite the composition, very obliterated - oval stamp of a Parisian company offering painting materials: TOILES & COULERS | EXTRA FINES | LUCIEN LEFEBVRE-FOINET | PARIS | 19, RUE VAVIN & 2, RUE BRÉA; in addition, on the upper strip of the loom a business card (print): Dr. And Mrs. Harold Golton | 3728 Winterbourne Road.



♣ to the price auctioned, in addition to other costs, will be added a fee based on the right of the creator and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Law of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite)

Zygmunt Menkes (Lviv 1896 - Riverdale, New York 1986) began his study of painting under Kazimierz Sichulski at the Lviv School of Art Industry. Then, between 1919 and 1922, he studied under Wojciech Weiss at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. In 1922 he went to Berlin, where he met Alexander Archipenko and benefited from his guidance. Since 1923, he was permanently in Paris. Associated with the École de Paris community of artists, he was friends with, among others, E. Zak and M. Chagall. He participated in the Autumn, Independent and Tuileries Salons, and exhibited in many Parisian galleries. He often traveled to Poland; he was a member of the New Generation grouping in Lviv and the Zwornik Association of Artists in Cracow, and participated in exhibitions in Lviv and Warsaw. He traveled extensively, including in 1928 he was in Berlin, and in 1935 in Spain (together with A. Nacht-Samborski). In 1935 he went to New York, where he settled permanently and where he had a solo exhibition in 1936. Over the years he worked with art galleries there and taught at the Art Students League. He painted portraits, nudes, figurative compositions, still lifes and landscapes, and after 1940 also paintings referring to the martyrdom of the Jews. His painting underwent various stylistic transformations. In the Paris period, his paintings were close to the currents of Expressionism and Fauvism. In the post-war period, he limited his colors, introduced a strong contour line, rich texture and, with time, an increasingly pronounced geometrization of forms.