UK
Collection

Portrait of Halia

Margit Selska

  • Portrait of Halia 2
Basic information
ID
Ж-5318
Author
Margit Selska
Name
Portrait of Halia
Date of creation
1969
Country
the Ukrainian SSR now Ukraine
Technique
oil painting
Material
plywood oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm)
80 x 63.5
Additionally
Type
painting
Genre
portraiture
Plot
Portrait
Provenance
Handed over by the Directorate of Art Exhibitions of the Artists' Union of the USSR, 1971
Information about author
Author
Margit Selska
Artist's lifetime
1900–1980
Biography
Margit Selska (Reich) (1900, Kolomyia – 1980, Lviv). In 1918, the artist entered the private Free Academy of Art in Lviv, where she studied under the guidance of Feliks Wygrzywalski. In 1921, Margit Reich graduated from the State Industrial School in Lviv. Between 1921 and 1922, she studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow with Wojciech Weiss and Wladyslaw Jarocki. From 1922 to 1923 she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien). In 1924, the artist moved to Paris, where she frequented exhibitions of modernists and became interested in cinema and photography. In Paris, she attended the Académie Moderne, the art school founded by Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant. In 1926, the artist took part in the exhibition of the Salon des Indépendants (Society of Independent Artists) in Paris, and the following year her first personal exhibition took place in Lviv. She was a member of the art association "Artes" (1929–1935), the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists (1931–1939), the New Generation (1932–1935) and the Lviv Trade Union of Plastic Artists (1932–1939). During the Holocaust, Margit Selska was in the Yaniv concentration camp, from which she managed to escape to Krakow with the help of her friends. In 1943, the Selski couple returned to Lviv. In 1978, the artist presented her works at an exhibition in the Lviv Art Gallery for the first time after the war. Margit Selska is the author of numerous portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. Post-Impressionism, Cubism and Constructivism greatly influenced the artist's work. Her works have a unique colouristic and compositional solution, particularly her early work 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) and others.

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