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286.
By Eugene (Eugeniusz) Zak
1884 - 1926 |
| Category - Israeli and International Art. |
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Description
Self Portrait With A Hat, signed
Technique
Pastel on cardboard
Dimensions
26 x 21 cm
Provenance
petit pale, Geneva
Biography
Eugene Zak, Painter, b.1884, Polish. In 1902, he left for Paris to undertake studies, first at the École des Beaux-Arts in the studio of the aged master of Academism Jean-Léon Gérôme, and then at Académie Colarossi in the studio of Albert Besnard. In 1903, he traveled to Italy and toward the end of the year to Munich, where he entered a private school run by the Slovenian Anton AŽbé. In 1904, he returned to Paris. His debut took place at the Autumn Salon in the same year, and two years later he was accepted as a jury member in the drawing section of this institution. During 1906-1908, he made trips to Brittany (Pont l'Abbé, among other places). On the Seine he was involved in the life of the Polish colony, participating in the Society of Polish Artists in Paris, among other organizations. He befriended many Polish artists there, including Roman Kramsztyk, Waclaw Borowski, Leopold Gottlieb, Jerzy Merkel, Elie Nadelman, Mela Muter, Tytus Czyzewski and Zygmunt Menkes. He also organized a one-man show at Galerie Druet (1911), and he was connected with important personalities of Parisian cultural life, including the critics Adolf Basler and André Salmon. In 1912, he became a professor at the Académie La Palette. Upon his frequent visits to Warsaw, he collaborated with the future members of "Rytm", a group he co-founded in 1921. In 1922, he permanently departed Poland. First, he went to Germany, where he had already been known and esteemed before World War I. He cooperated with the periodical Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, publishing articles on certain artists who were close to him. In 1923 he settled once again in Paris, where he joined his friends Zygmunt Menkes and Marc Chagall. From the beginning, Zak expressed his artistic temperament through a sophisticated application of line, referring in his sanguine portraits to paintings by da Vinci, Botticelli, Holbein and Dürer. He also borrowed certain motifs from Chinese porcelain and Persian miniatures. He painted views of Parisian back streets and boulevards on the Seine and, sporadically, depicted New Testament themes. Even before World War I, some of his compositions were in line with the idyllic tradition represented by works of such artists as Poussin, Claude (called Le Lorraine), Watteau, and most of all Puvis de Chavannes, whose Poor Fisherman at the Louvre inspired a number of Zak's paintings and drawings. Zak, like Modigliani, by means of sophisticated drawing and a poetic imagination with a romantic tint, created a very special "human race" found only in the figures of his pictures. During his lifetime, Zak organized one-man shows in Paris (1911, 1925) and Warsaw (1917). Apart from the Paris Salons (from 1904) and an exhibition of the Polish artists residing in Paris, which was organized in Barcelona (1912), his works appeared at the famous Armory Show in New York, Chicago and Detroit, where he was the only Pole besides Elie Nadelman (1913), at the Venice Biennale (1914), and at the Parisian exhibitions of the Association France-Pologne in Paris (1924). Moreover, he took part in exhibitions of the Society of Polish Artists "Sztuka", beginning in 1908, as well as those of the Polish Expressionists (later called Formists) before they formed an official group (Kraków 1913 and Zakopane 1916) and after (Kraków 1917 and Lvov 1918). He exhibited in Warsaw as a member of the Polish Art Club (1917-1919), the New Group (1918), and Association of Polish Artists "Rytm" in Kraków (1923) and Warsaw (1924). The artist's posthumous exhibitions occurred at the three Paris Salons and at Parisian galleries as well as in Warsaw and Düsseldorf (all in 1926), New York (1927), Buffalo (1928), London (1927) and several more times in Paris, including at the Galerie Zak (1936, 1938). Died in 1926 from a heart attack.
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Self Portrait With A Hat
Estimate: $4,000/$6,000
Location: Israel
Number of Bids: 14
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