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Portrait of Roman Selskyi

Margit Selska (Reich)

  • Portrait of Roman Selskyi 2
Basic information
ID
Ж-5319
Author
Margit Selska (Reich)
Name
Portrait of Roman Selskyi
Date of creation
1970s
Country
the Ukrainian SSR now Ukraine
Technique
oil painting
Material
canvas oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm)
68 x 89
Additionally
Type
painting
Genre
portraiture
Plot
Portrait
Provenance
Received from the Union of Soviet Artists
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
Performing portraits, Margit Selska was a kind of psychologist trying to show the inner world of man in her works. The portrait of her husband Roman Selskyi was created after more than 30 years of their married life. Roman Selskyi was an outstanding Ukrainian artist, fine colorist, and teacher. The modern trends of European art of that time had a great influence on his creative work. In the 1960s and 1970s, thanks to the activities of Selskyi, the Lviv School of Colorism was considered to be one of the most powerful in the Soviet Union. Against the background of Socialist Realism, many artists aspired to something new in the realm of art; thus, the school served as a source of inspiration for them as well as the place where they could absorb new ideas. In Lviv, Roman Selskyi was, in fact, the unofficial leader and encourager of the Lviv Art School, a particularly striking phenomenon in the 20th-century Ukrainian art world. Between the 1940s and 1970s, the Selski Salon was the center of the Lviv creative elite, where they spoke Polish, German, and French, listened to music, as well as had numerous art discussions.
Portrayed person
Lifetime of the person portrayed
1903–1990
Legal regulation
Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

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