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Portrait of Sofiia Valnytska

Margit Selska (Reich)

Basic information

ID: Ж-5872
Author: Margit Selska (Reich)
Name: Portrait of Sofiia Valnytska
Date of creation: 1940s
Country: the Ukrainian SSR
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas oil
Dimensions: 61 x 42.5 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

The painting belongs to the group of portraits painted in the Post-Impressionist style in the 1940s. It is a full-length portrait of a middle-aged woman sitting in an armchair, slightly tilted to the left, with an open book in her hands. The woman is wearing a grey-green hat with a red-orange shawl over it. The ends of the scarf fall over a green jumper with white dots. The sitter has turned away from the book and is looking thoughtfully into the distance. The background of the portrait is dark and neutral.

Portrayed person

The name of the person portrayed: Sofiia Valnytska (1896–1964) was a Ukrainian Soviet artist and art critic, a member of the Union of Artists of Ukraine (1944–1948). She has worked in the fields of graphic, decorative, and applied arts. She designed book covers, carpets, and clothes. She is the author of the scientific study "Folk Art of Prykarpattia" (Kyiv, 1960), as well as articles about folk, decorative and applied arts in the magazines "Nova Khata", "Vikna", "Literature and Art", and the newspapers "Vilna Ukraina" and "Lvivska Pravda".
Lifetime of the person portrayed: 1896–1964

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Portrait of Sofiia Valnytska

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