Sigmund Menkes Drawings and Watercolor Paintings

Genre: Expressionist Subject: Figures Medium: Ink Surface: Paper Dimensions w/Frame: 14 1/4" x 12 1/4" Zygmunt (Sigmund) Menkes born in Lviv (Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire) Polish painter of Jewish origin, born in 1896 in Lvov, died in 1986 in Riverdale, New York. Member of the École de Paris group in the 1920s and 1930s. From the beginning of 1935 he lived and worked in the United States; he was a representative of the Expressionist Colorism movement. Menkes began his artistic studies in 1912 at the Industrial School in Lviv. At the same time he worked as a restorer of rural churches. Between 1919 and 1922 he supplemented his studies at Krakow's Academy of Fine Arts and in 1922 expanded on this education and broadened his artistic skills in the private studio of Alexander Archipenko in Berlin. In 1923 Menkes settled in Paris, where he became a member of the École de Paris - a community that was primarily made up of artists hailing from Central and Eastern Europe who rented inexpensive studios in the "La Ruche" building in the Montparnasse district. Menkes developed close friendships with Eugeniusz Zak and Marc Chagall. Two years later, Menkes made the decision to settle permanently in France. He participated in a series of the city's salons, including the Salon d'Automne (1924, 1925, 1927), the Salon des Independants (1925-1928), and Tuileries Salon (1928, 1929, 1931, 1938). He presented his works in a number of Parisian galleries, among them, the Bernheim, de France, and Le Portique. In 1930 the artist traveled to the United States to present his work in Cleveland and New York. He also exhibited his paintings in Canada and England. He visited Poland frequently, spent time in Berlin in 1928, and toured Spain with Artur Nacht-Samborski in 1935, moving to the United States the same year. In 1936 Menkes had his first solo exhibition in New York at the Sullivan Gallery on 57th Street. He also worked with the Associated American Artists Gallery and the French Art Gallery, and for years was a lecturer at the Art Students League. Solo exhibitions of his work were organized by the Galerie Le Portique in Paris (1928), the Friends of Fine Arts Society in Lviv (1930), and at the Jewish Society for Support of the Fine Arts in Warsaw (1931). In Poland the artist was a member of groups with a Coloristic orientation, including Nowa Generacja (New Generation) and Zwornik (Keystone), participating in their exhibitions in Lviv (1932, 1935) and Warsaw (1935, 1938). Menkes received a series of important distinctions for his work, including the Carol H. Beck Medal of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (Philadelphia, 1943), the Gold Medal of the Corcoran Gallery (Washington, D.C., 1947), the Andrew Carnegie...