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Portrait of a Woman (Self-Portrait)

Margit Selska (Reich)

  • Portrait of a Woman (Self-Portrait) 2
Basic information
ID
Ж-6187
Author
Margit Selska (Reich)
Name
Portrait of a Woman (Self-Portrait)
Date of creation
1929
Country
Ukraine
Culture
Eastern Europe
Technique
oil painting
Material
canvas oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm)
63.7 x 52
Additionally
Type
painting
Genre
portraiture
Provenance
From Roman Selskyi, 1983
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
A group of female portraits from the late 1930s occupies a special place in Margit Selska's oeuvre. They are intimate and lyrical. They contain expressive attention to tonal and light aspects of painting, the texture variation of the colour layer is an exponent of subtle nuances of colouristic polyphony. Another aspect is sentimental melancholy, which is combined with attention to the youthfulness and attractiveness of the models. Perhaps the latter was a sign of the artist's own attitude towards the time, and the people in it, at a time of world cataclysms. But it is the atmosphere of the time that is reflected in Margit Selska's work of this period, in particular in the "Portrait of a Woman" painting, which is probably a self-portrait of the artist. Almost the full height of the vertical composition, on a yellowish-red background with splashes of blue, is a half-length image of a woman sitting in a soft armchair. The subject's head is slightly turned to the left. The woman's yellowish-brown wavy hair is slicked back to the right side, somewhat coming to the forehead. Thin eyebrows arch and the gaze of wide-open brown eyes is directed down to the left, outlined red lips and a straight nose. The woman is dressed in a light blue dress with a white collar.
Inscriptions
In the bottom right there is author's signature: "reihowа"
Legal regulation
Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

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