The Flautist By Zygmunt Menkes 1896 - 1986

Description
Signed (lower left)

Technique
Oil on cardboard

Dimensions
38 x 32 cm

Provenance
Stern Gallery, c. 1975

Condition
Good

Biography
Zygmunt Menkes, Painter, born 1896 in Lvov, Poland. At age 16 he enrolled at the Institute of Decorative Art of Lvov where he met Alfred Aberbaum. To make a living, he worked as a house painter, whiles studying the fresco technique and restoring orthodox churches. In 1919 he enrolled in the Fine Arts Academy of Krakow. In 1922, Menkes arrived in Berlin and studied at the studio of Alexandre Archipenko. He arrived in Paris in 1923 and settled in Montparnasse. In 1924 he met a collector that supported him and regularly bought his paintings. He married Stanislawa Theodora who modeled for her husband as well as for Léopold Gottlieb and Raymond Kanelba. Menkès traveled to the South of France and fell in love with the region of Toulon. From 1930, he shows his painting alternately in Lvov, Paris, Toronto and New York. In 1934, the collector Paul Guillaume from the Bernheim gallery, awards Menkes' work, though he never actually received the prize due to his origin and nationality. In 1935, he unwillingly left for New York and settled there permanently in 1939. He only left for a few stays in Israel and in Poland in 1950. Menkes died in Riverdale, New York, in 1986. His last wish was for his ashes to be scattered in Israel.