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Woman with a Cat

Margit Selska (Reich)

Basic information

ID: Ж-5313
Author: Margit Selska (Reich)
Name: Woman with a Cat
Date of creation: 1960s
Country: Ukraine
Culture: Eastern Europe
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas oil
Dimensions: 45.5 x 64 cm (height x width)

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: narrative art
Provenance: Purchased from Margit Selska, 1978
Exposition: Lozinski Palace

Information about author

Author: Margit Selska (Reich)
Author in the original: Margit Sielska (Reich)
Artist's lifetime: 1900–1980
Country: Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ukrainian SSR, now Ukraine
Biography: Margit Selska (Reich) (1900, Kolomyia – 1980, Lviv) was a Ukrainian artist, the wife of Roman Selskyi. She was born in Kolomyia to the family of engineer Isaac Reich. She attended the private Free Academy of Arts of Leonard Podhorodecki in Lviv (1918); her teacher was Feliks Wygrzywalski. In 1921, Margit Selska graduated from the State Industrial School in Lviv, then studied painting at the Krakow Academy of Arts (1921–1922) under Wojciech Weiss and Wladyslaw Jarocki, and from 1922 to 1923 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In 1924, the artist moved to Paris, where she visited exhibitions of modern artists, became interested in cinema and photography, and studied at the Académie Moderne, a private art school of Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant. The artist participated in the Salon des Indépendants (Paris, 1926). The following year she had her first solo exhibition in Lviv. She was a member of the artistic association "Artes" (1929–1935) and the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists (1931–1939), participated in the activities of the "New Generation" (1932–1935) and the Lviv Professional Union of Plastic Artists (LZZAP, 1932–1939). During the Holocaust, Margit Selska was imprisoned in the Yaniv concentration camp, from which she managed to escape to Krakow with the help of friends. In 1943, the Selski couple returned to Lviv. In 1978, for the first time after the war, the artist presented her works in an exhibition at the Lviv Art Gallery. Margit Selska authorises numerous portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. Post-Impressionism, Cubism and Constructivism strongly influenced her oeuvre. Her works are characterised by a particular colouristic and compositional solution, especially her early works Hel (1932), Woman with a Cat (1960s), Crimea. Uiutne Village (1962), Carpathian Landscape (1965), Near the Sea (1964), Grape Harvest (1968), Old Ash Tree (1976), etc.

Object description

In the 1960s, Margit Selska began to turn to textured painting. The work "Woman with a Cat" belongs to this type of painting. The composition is colourfully intense, built on a combination of red, black and white-yellow colours, accentuated by facetious brushstrokes. In the centre of the painting, a woman is depicted lying on a red sofa, which is covered by a white coverlet against an orangish-red wall background. The woman is dressed in an orangish dress with dark dots, a white cat is depicted next to it. To the left of the sofa is a bouquet in a light-coloured vase, which stands on a cubic white and yellow stand. Along the right edge of the painting is a dark rectangular door stain in a white frame with a red line drawn diagonally across it.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Woman with a Cat

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