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Carpathian Landscape

Margit Selska (Reich)

  • Carpathian Landscape 2
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Basic information
ID
Ж-4720
Author
Margit Selska (Reich)
Name
Carpathian Landscape
Date of creation
1965
Country
Ukraine
Culture
Eastern Europe
Technique
oil painting
Material
canvas oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm)
60.5 x 92
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
A horizontal composition, bounded around the perimeter by an irregularly shaped brown frame. In the painting, the artist uses textured technique in some places, in particular the green-brown crown of the tree on the right and the green grass of the meadow stretching between the between the fences. In the foreground is the figure of a woman dressed in black and white and a spotted cow (of black and white colour) at the fence. Behind her on the right are several trees. The structure of the fence in yellow-orange and light brown resembles a complex zigzag composition, dividing the valley space into defined sections, and "disappearing" behind the outline of a mountain hut. Behind it mountain ranges are depicted in dark blue and dark purple tones.
Inscriptions
At the bottom right, there is the signature in black paint: "Selska"
Legal regulation
Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery