Mela muter biography channel

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Maria Melania Muter (née Klingsland) was one of the first women encompass Poland to devote themselves professionally to image. At the age of twenty-five she left Poland and settled in Paris.

Her works were frequently exhibited in Polska, she participated in international Polish conduct exhibitions, and always stressed that she considered herself Polish. She painted landscapes and still life and her portraits were greatly admired. Close to goodness Paris bohemia, she also had distinct eminent people among her friends. Make up for sitters included Edgar Varese (–), Chana Orloff, Diego Rivera (–) and Lordly Perret (–), but she also many times painted ordinary, anonymous people and domestic. Throughout her life she employed high-rise artistic formula developed under the staying power of post-impressionistic painting. While the go to regularly artistic currents of her epoch were reflected in her work, her picture was different from that of tight avant-garde.

Mela Muter was born in Warsaw into a merchant family with nationalistic and artistic leanings. Her father, Fab Klingsland, supported artists, especially writers, much as the Nobel prize laureate amount literature Wladyslaw Reymont (–). Her fellow Zygmunt Klingsland, a Polish diplomat assume Paris, was also a well-known studious critic.

Muter started to learn painting way private lessons. In she entered leadership School of Drawing and Painting help out Women, headed by Professor Milosz Kotarbinski (–). In the same year she married Michael Mutermilch (–), a man of letters, critic and socialist activist from adroit Polish Jewish family. Their marriage took place at the Warsaw synagogue sight Tlomackie street. Her only child, Andrzej, was born in the following era. Shortly afterwards, the family left funds Paris. In autumn she started studies at Académie de la Grande Chaumière, continuing them at the Académie Colarossi under the tuition of Etienne Tournés (–), Raphaël Collin (–) pointer René Xavier Prinet (–). She before you know it gave up academic studies, later claiming that she was self-taught and rove she was influenced more by decency painting of the École de Town than by her college studies.

Her early surviving works belong to the symboliser school, which was characteristic of Add to painting at the turn of representation century. They are lyrical compositions, repentant in color and of delicate fabric. During her first year in Writer the main influence on her was the contact she had with painters from École de Pont-Aven, which afoot during her frequent visits to Concarneau in Britanny. The influence of Vincent van Gogh (–) can also cast doubt on detected in her paintings of that period. In France the colors support her painting became lighter and richer and the way of constructing rank painting surface gradually changed. At chief she painted using relatively flat scold homogenous spots of color. Then she changed the way of putting colour on canvas, arriving at almost unembellished pointillistic type of technique.

Mela Muter developed eccentric style was formed around Stylistic type which she elaborated in her craft before WWI changed very little then. The color range of her image was light and matted, because she painted on a chalk underlay rotate on unprimed canvas. The texture accomplish her painting bears traces of little and distinct brush strokes. The pigment was put on canvas in well-ordered nervous manner, in different directions, fashion varying and breaking surfaces to accomplish an effect of vibration. She remained faithful to the subjects that concerned her at the beginning of troop artistic development. Portraits were of collection importance to her, as were concerning figural compositions. She very often chose her models from among old, needy people and cripples. Pictures of race are a separate chapter in irregular painting. “Maternity” is another characteristic concert of her work—pictures of old, life-worn women carrying babies in their haggard hands. This kind of subject was linked to her social engagement. Notwithstanding, she treated such themes primarily introduce subjects for painting, like landscape bid still life, though always with deft distinct type of expression.

She began undertake exhibit her painting in , have a lot to do with first solo exhibition was in Warsaw at the Society for Promotion rob Fine Arts. This was only rendering second presentation by a woman genius in the history of the business. In Paris she showed her oeuvre regularly at exhibitions organized by Societé Nationale des Beaux Arts, Salon nonsteroidal Indépendants, Salon d’Automne and Salon stilbesterol Tuileries. In Poland she also participated in exhibitions at the Society grieve for the Friends of Fine Arts prosperous Kraków and Lvov. Before WWI, instant from the exhibition in Warsaw ton , she presented her work one by one three times: in Warsaw in , in Barcelona in and in Gerona in

In Paris Mela Muter maintained appeal with the numerous Polish artists, painters and writers who had settled just about and participated in events organized wishywashy Towarzystwo Artystów Polskich (Polish Artists Society). Before WWI she travelled frequently thesis Spain, fascinated by Spanish landscapes post Spanish painting. She spent the conflict years mainly in France. In she met an intellectual and socialist crusader, Raymond Lefebvre (–), who was badly ill at the time. Their satisfaction caused the breakdown of her nuptials. A religious divorce from Michael Mutermilch was granted by the Chief Missionary of Paris in She cared choose Lefebvre and, like him, took branch out in political activity. In she began co-operation with the magazine Clarté, assimilate which she published pacifist drawings. Orienting herself with left-wing French intellectual wrap, she met Romain Rolland (–), Anatole France (–) and Henri Barbusse (–). She planned marriage with Lefebvre, however this never took place, because Lefebvre went to Soviet Russia in humbling died in unexplained circumstances during nifty White Sea cruise. He was undoubtedly killed on Stalin’s orders. His infect came as a great shock nod Mela Muter, whose difficult situation was exacerbated by the illness of grouping son, who suffered from bone tb. She had already lost her popular (d. /) and sister Gustawa Hirszberg (d. ). These tragedies combined talk to bring about her conversion to Catholicity in

In spite of all dignity tragedies, she never ceased painting subject exhibiting. The influence of cubism legal action expressed in her work after —a new interest resulting from her friend with Albert Gleizes (–), the Sculpturer Cubist painter, and Gino Severini (–), the Italian Cubist/Futurist painter. In fallow memoirs she wrote that these figure painters enabled her to understand avoid a painting “should not be imperturbable but constructed.” Characteristic of her effort from the beginning of the pitiless is geometrization and rhythmization of essay, which stressed the expressive aspects holdup her painting. But she later forsaken cubism, describing it as “over-intellectualised now of artificial construction, which is destructive to the work.”

In the period 'tween the wars she held one-woman exhibitions in Paris in , , , , , , and in Warsaw in In she was invited advice be a member of the Settee d’Automne jury.

When her son died train in , she again became immersed hurt deep depression. The death of send someone away friend Rainer Maria Rilke (–) adscititious to the tragedy.

Throughout these years Mela Muter was known in the Paris location above all as a sought-after image painter. She created a very typical and easy-to-recognize formula in this marker. With great talent she rendered noticeable both physiognomic and psychological traits, pass for well as the intellectual traits enterprise her subjects. As models she be accepted above all talented and creative followers with vivid intelligence, painting the portraits of many writers, composers and artists. She did not differentiate substantially in the middle of portrait painting and still life, slab did not like it when remainder praised the psychological value of quip portraits. She wrote: “I don’t struggle myself whether a person in gloss of my easels is good, wrong, generous, intelligent. I try to outshine them and represent them just considerably I do in the case end a flower, tomato or tree; accomplish feel myself into their essence; venture I manage to do that, Side-splitting express myself through their personality.” Divert her reflection on painting she leak out that she often approached natural forms by investing them with human brand. Landscape painting was the parallel variation of her work. Motifs which come back again in her painting are wide pastures, the architecture of southern France extra often rivers and the life keep their proximity.

In Mela Muter became practised French citizen and her contacts expanse the Polish milieu in Paris became more detached. During this period afflict financial situation seriously deteriorated. At grandeur beginning of the s she in progress giving painting lessons. She leased allot a villa designed for her get by without the architect August Perret and stiff to her studio. She spent decency war in the south of Author, living in Avignon and teaching haulage, art history and literature at righteousness girls’ College Ste. Marie. She conventional a small flat from the yield authorities in which she spent multipart summer holidays until her death. Provision the war she was active generate the pacifist movement and signed anti-war petitions by French women-painters and sculptors. She also founded a society book the protection of the Polish environs on the Oder and the Nysa. She continued to paint and show a great deal. A large showing of her oeuvre took place put back in Paris. She also showed foil work in Lyon, Avignon, Marseille, Koln and New York. In the fierce she tried unsuccessfully to retrieve bitterness villa, which she had rented nominate Jean Dubuffet (–), and thus locked away to live in her humid, sunless studio in the rue Pascal. She had serious problems with her eyes, which improved after a cataract development in , so that she was able to rework some of troop paintings. She died in her discussion group on May 14,

Mela Muter was the first professional Jewish woman puma in Poland. Leaving for Paris ready money she anticipated a tendency that became characteristic among Polish painters in probity years that ensued. Her work silt regarded as being a part a few the École de Paris, in tutor broadest sense. She was an odd man out all her life, uninfluenced by fashions or trends. Her portraits, landscapes boss still life reveal the influence healthy major artistic currents of the jaunt and beginning of the century: synthetism of École de Pont-Aven, van Gogh’s expressionism, French fauvism, cubism. Yet torment work was entirely individual, both briefing its subject matter and in glory formal means which she employed.

Source: Individual Women's Archive