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Embroideress

Margit Selska (Reich)

Basic information

ID: Ж-5105
Author: Margit Selska (Reich)
Name: Embroideress
Date of creation: 1968
Country: the Ukrainian SSR
Culture: Contemporary times
Technique: oil painting
Material: canvas oil
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 80 x 60

Additionally

Type: painting
Genre: genre art
Provenance: Handed over by the Exhibition Directorate of the Union of Artists of Ukraine

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

"Embroideress" is an example of the understanding of the ethno-cultural theme in the paradigm of plastic modernist experience, characteristic of M. Selska's work in the 1950s and 1960s. The semantic basis of the work is the archetype of the house – a valuable space associated with the life of one's kin and family, which is "one's own" and which opposes the "strangeness" of external, uncontrolled, and unknown worlds. The image of the liminal topos of the window emphasises the understanding of the domestic scene in the fundamental archaic coordinates of "one's own" – "someone else's". The axial fullness, closeness and warmth of the farmhouse are visualised by the flattening, Cezanne-like radiant painting, a combination of deep, warm, rich browns, ochres, olives and greys. The connection between man and the microcosm of their home is emphasised by the repetition of colour reflexes on a female figure, a houseplant, and a wall. A representative of family life and the world of folk culture is perceived as a woman in the fullness of her archaic symbolism and functions in everyday life. The semantics of thread, which is inherent in embroidery and is associated with happiness, family continuity and the connection between generations (O. Potebnia), adds to the significance of the work. The basis of the plastic solution of the canvas is a synthesis of post-Impressionist and Cubist inspirations, which can be seen in the affirmation of the value of the painting surface, the impasto painting, and the reduction of the visible to colour planes. The work is linked to the folk art tradition through the careful reproduction of the folk system and the colour rhythm of the painting surface, similar to the patterns of folk carpets.

Inscriptions

In the lower right corner is the inscription: "Selska".

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Embroideress

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