Dimensions: 60.3 x 73.3 cm
Signed p.d.: 'Eug. Zak'
other titles: Sitting Young Man, Young Boy, Sitting Man
on the reverse, fragmentarily preserved paper sticker, notes on the painter's loom, paper sticker of Galerie Zak in Paris and auction stickers, on the frame, two paper exhibition stickers of the Roerich Museum in New York and the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, two paper stickers of Parisian framing studios and an auction sticker
Origins
Galerie Zak, Paris
Collection of Spencer Kellogg, Jr., New York (from 1928)
Sotheby's, New York, September 1994
private collection, United States
Exhibited
International Art Center of the Roerich Museum, New York 1930
Paintings and Drawings by Eugene Zak, Ceramics by Mika Mikoun, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, 1928
Literature
Barbara Brus-Malinowska, Eugeniusz Zak 1884-1926, Warsaw 2004, p. 173, no. 253 (as "Młodzieniec na tle muru")
Paintings and Drawings by Eugeniusz Zak, Ceramics by Mika Mikoun, exhibition catalog, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Buffalo 1928, cat. no. 4
Stefania Zahorska, Eugenjusz Zak, Warsaw 1927, p. nlb., il. 25
Florent Fels, Paul Barchan, Eugen Zak, "Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration" 1925-1926, 57, p. 380 (ill.) (as "Sitzender Mann")
Stefania Zahorska, 'The Last Interwiew [with Zak]', "Fine Arts" 1925-1926, R. 2, p. 504 (il.) (as "Young Boy")
Henri Martinie, Eugène Zak, "Der Cicerone" 1925, 17, p. 651 (ill.) (as "Sitzender Jüngling")
Biography
Eugene Zak, one of the most prominent Polish painters of the 1st half of the 20th century, worked mainly in France, but also in Poland and Germany. He is considered a representative of neoclassicism in painting. He was associated with the artists of the Warsaw group RYTM (founded in 1922) and the École de Paris circle. He went to Paris to study in 1901, then to Munich and Italy. In 1904 he settled permanently in the French capital, where he exhibited at the Paris Salons: Autumn, Independent or Society of National Arts. He also exhibited extensively in the galleries of Paris, New York, Cologne or London. His work was initially influenced by the Symbolists and Nabists of Maurice Denis' circle. Later, his paintings exhibited characteristics of Neoclassical painting, Art Deco and École de Paris Expressionism. He was an opponent of the avant-garde, but one can find influences in his paintings, processed by his own creative personality of Cezanne or Matisse. The most important feature of his art was to create from the imagination, drawing on the motifs of old art and their decorative transformation. He considered the art of the early Italian Renaissance to be the most perfect. "The heroes of Zak's compositions are "free people": fishermen, shepherds, women with children, also comedians, dancers, jugglers, vagabonds, shown sometimes in an empty interior, sometimes as residents of Arcadia. The idyllic landscapes, painted by the seriously ill artist, revealed a characteristic dissonance between the beauty of the southern, human-friendly landscape and a sense of transience."
