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Male Portrait

Margit Selska (Reich)

Basic information

ID: Ж-5869
Author: Margit Selska (Reich)
Name: Male Portrait
Date of creation: 1941
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas oil
Dimensions: 65 x 54 cm (height x width)

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: portraiture
Plot: Portrait
Provenance: Gifted by Roman Selskyi, 1983

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

Against a brownish ochre background of the vertical composition is a bust image of an old bald man turned to the left. His face is elongated, with deep wrinkles on the forehead converging on the bridge of the nose. His gaze is weary, directed to the left. The man's nose is long, slightly thickened at the bottom. A greyish moustache covers his upper lip. He is wearing a jacket with a dark vest, a grey shirt and a dark green tie. The artist focused on the man's face since the light fell there. This adds a psychological dramatism to the portrait, emphasised by the tired but full of peace and wisdom look of the older man.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Male Portrait

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