Dimensions: 63 x 44.5 cm
Signed l.d.: 'Eug. Zak'
On the reverse a paper sticker with the description of the painting and a sticker with the deposit number of the National Museum in Warsaw: 'p752/03/9'
Provenance
the collection of Zbigniew Legutko, New Jersey
collection of Barbara Piasecka-Johnson, Princeton
collection of Ewa and Wojciech Fibak
Polswiss Art auction house, December 2008
private collection, Poland
Exhibited
Eugeniusz Zak 1884-1926, National Museum in Warsaw, December 18, 2003 - February 28, 2004.
École de Paris, Jewish Artists from Poland in the collection of Wojciech Fibak, Leszno District Museum, May-July 2000.
Polish Paris, École de Paris: the collection of Wojciech Fibak: an exhibition of Polish-Jewish artists of the 19th and 20th centuries associated with Paris, from Piotr Michałowski to Jan Lebenstein, National Museum in Szczecin, December 1999 - March 2000
Polish Painting in the Collection of Ewa and Wojciech Fibak, National Museum in Poznan, August 22-October 25, 1992.
Polish Painting in the Collection of Ewa and Wojciech Fibak, National Museum in Warsaw, May 23-August 9, 1992
Eugeniusz Zak posthumous exhibition, Salon des Tuileries, Palais de Bois, Paris, June 1926
Literature
Eugeniusz Zak 1884-1926, exhibition catalog, edited by Barbara Brus-Malinowska, National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw 2004, ill. 230, s. 165
Artur Tanikowski, Eugeniusz Zak, Sejny 2003, p.144
Polish Paris, École de Paris: the collection of Wojciech Fibak: an exhibition of Polish-Jewish artists of the 19th and 20th centuries associated with Paris, from Piotr Michałowski to Jan Lebenstein, National Museum in Szczecin, Szczecin 2000, p.172
École de Paris, Jewish Artists from Poland in the Collection of Wojciech Fibak, exhibition catalog, Leszno District Museum, Leszno 2000, p. 60.
École de Paris. Jewish Artists from Poland in the Collection of Wojciech Fibak, exhibition catalog, Palace of Art in Cracow, Cracow 1998, p. 291 (il.), cat. no. 134
Polish Paintings in the Collection of Ewa and Wojciech Fibak, exhibition catalog, National Museum in Warsaw, National Museum in Poznan, Warsaw 1992, p.162
M. Rola [Michael Legutko], Eugeniusz Zak, "Pro arte", summer 1987, p.14.
Jerzy Sandel, Eugeniusz Zak, "Fołks Sztyme" 1958, add. no. 2/27, p.5,
Stefania Zahorska, Eugeniusz Zak, Warsaw 1927, ill. 26
Biography
Eugeniusz Zak, one of the most outstanding Polish painters of the 1st half of the 20th century, worked mainly in France, but also in Poland and Germany. He is considered a representative of neoclassicism in painting. He was associated with the artists of the Warsaw group RYTM (founded in 1922) and the École de Paris circle. He went to Paris to study in 1901, then to Munich and Italy. In 1904 he settled permanently in the French capital, where he exhibited at the Paris Salons: Autumn, Independent or Society of National Arts. He also exhibited extensively in the galleries of Paris, New York, Cologne or London. His work was initially influenced by the Symbolists and Nabists of Maurice Denis' circle. Later, his paintings exhibited characteristics of Neoclassical painting, Art Deco and École de Paris Expressionism. He was an opponent of the avant-garde, but one can find influences in his paintings, processed by his own creative personality of Cezanne or Matisse. The most important feature of his art was to create from the imagination, drawing on the motifs of old art and their decorative transformation. He considered the art of the early Italian Renaissance to be the most perfect. "The heroes of Zak's compositions are "free people": fishermen, shepherds, women with children, also comedians, dancers, jugglers, vagabonds, shown sometimes in an empty interior, sometimes as residents of Arcadia. The idyllic landscapes, painted by the seriously ill artist, revealed a characteristic dissonance between the beauty of the southern, human-friendly landscape and a sense of transience."
