Zygmunt Menkes (1896 Lviv – 1986 Riverdale), Still Life with an Easel, before 1928

oil on canvas, 131 × 86 cm
signed lower left: “Menkes”

on the reverse:
– a damaged label from the Parisian Galerie d’Art Le Portigue, 99 Boulevard Raspail, dated 1928 (with the description): “[...] E PORTIQUE 99, Bd Raspail a Pa [...] |Menkes |Still Life on an Easel |Painting |No. 31”; below, a fragment of another label with a handwritten inscription: 60 p.; on the stretcher, the inscription: “PH 60P MENKES”; an illegible round stamp

Exhibited:
– Solo exhibition of Zygmunt Menkes, Galerie d’art Le Portigue, Paris. 1928, cat. no. 31.

“… musical instruments appear very frequently in Menkes’s compositions. They serve as natural ‘models’ and compositional props, but his predilection for them is not a matter of pure chance. He himself was musically inclined on his mother’s side, played a little, and reportedly said that if he hadn’t become a painter, he would have devoted himself to music. In his attic studio, he had an entire collection of old instruments.”
Władysława Jaworska, “Zygmunt Menkes. Painter of the École de Paris,” in *Biuletyn Historii Sztuki* 1996, No. 1–2, pp. 20–80