Eugeniusz Zak
Encyclopedia
Life
Eugeniusz Zak was born to a family of assimilated PolishPoland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
in Mogilno, Minsk Governorate
Minsk Governorate
The Minsk Governorate or Government of Minsk was a governorate of the Russian Empire. The seat was in Minsk. It was created in 1793 from the land acquired in the partitions of Poland, and lasted until 1921.- Administrative structure :...
(nowadays Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
). As a boy he moved to Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, where he graduated from a non-classical secondary school
Secondary school
Secondary school is a term used to describe an educational institution where the final stage of schooling, known as secondary education and usually compulsory up to a specified age, takes place...
. In 1902, he left for Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to undertake studies, first at the École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...
in the studio of the aged master of academism Jean-Léon Gérôme
Jean-Léon Gérôme
Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as Academicism. The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism, portraits and other subjects, bringing the Academic painting tradition to an artistic climax.-Life:Jean-Léon Gérôme was born...
, and then at Académie Colarossi
Académie Colarossi
The Académie Colarossi is an art school founded by the Italian sculptor Filippo Colarossi. First located on the Île de la Cité, it moved in the 1870s to 10 rue de la Grande-Chaumière in the VIe arrondissement of Paris, France....
in the studio of Albert Besnard. In 1903, he traveled to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and toward the end of the year to Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, where he entered a private school
Private school
Private schools, also known as independent schools or nonstate schools, are not administered by local, state or national governments; thus, they retain the right to select their students and are funded in whole or in part by charging their students' tuition, rather than relying on mandatory...
run by the Slovenian
Slovenians
The Slovenes, Slovene people, Slovenians, or Slovenian people are a South Slavic people primarily associated with Slovenia and the Slovene language.-Population:Most Slovenes today live within the borders of the independent Slovenia...
Anton Ažbe
Anton Ažbe
Anton Ažbe was a Slovene realist painter and teacher of painting.Ažbe, crippled since birth and orphaned at the age of 8, learned painting as an apprentice to Janez Wolf and at the Academies in Vienna and Munich. At the age of 30 Ažbe founded his own school of painting in Munich that became a...
.
In 1904 he returned to Paris. In the same year his debut took place at the Autumn Salon
Paris Salon
The Salon , or rarely Paris Salon , beginning in 1725 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Between 1748–1890 it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the Western world...
and two years later he was accepted as a jury member in the drawing section of this institution. In the years 1906-1908 he made trips to Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
(Pont l’Abbé, among other places). On the Seine
Seine
The Seine is a -long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Saint-Seine near Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre . It is navigable by ocean-going vessels...
he was involved in the life of the Polish colony, participating in the Society of Polish Artists in Paris, among other organizations. He befriended many Polish artists there, including Roman Kramsztyk, Wacław Borowski, Leopold Gottlieb, Jerzy Merkel, Elie Nadelman
Elie Nadelman
Elie Nadelman was an American sculptor, draughtsman and collector of Polish birth.-Early years:...
, Mela Muter, Tytus Czyżewski and Zygmunt Menkes.
His fame
Celebrity
A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...
grew rapidly. The French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
government purchased of one of his paintings for the Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland in the south...
Museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
(1910), he organized a one-man show at Galerie Druet (1911), and he was connected with important personalities of Parisian cultural life, including the critics Adolf Basler and André Salmon
André Salmon
André Salmon was a French poet, art critic and writer. He was one of the defenders of cubism, with Guillaume Apollinaire and Maurice Raynal.-Biography:Andre Salmon was born in Paris...
. In 1912 he became a professor at the Académie La Palette. In 1913 he married a beginning painter Jadwiga Kon, who managed the well-known Galerie Zak after his death. Between 1914 and 1916 he stayed in southern France (Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
, St Paul-de-Vence, and Vence
Vence
Vence is a commune set in the hills of the Alpes Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France between Nice and Antibes.-Population:-Sights:...
), and also visited Lausanne
Lausanne
Lausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...
in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
.
In 1916 he returned with his family to Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, settling in his wife’s hometown of Częstochowa
Czestochowa
Częstochowa is a city in south Poland on the Warta River with 240,027 inhabitants . It has been situated in the Silesian Voivodeship since 1999, and was previously the capital of Częstochowa Voivodeship...
. He associated with the Formists. Upon his frequent visits to Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, he collaborated with the future members of Rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
, a group he co-founded in 1921. In 1922 he left Poland for good. First, he went to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, where he had already been known and esteemed before the World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. He visited Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and later Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
, where he carried out a commission to decorate the interior of the villa of the architect Fritz August Breuhaus
Fritz August Breuhaus
Fritz August Breuhaus, was born on february 9th, 1883 in Solingen, Germany. He was a famous German architect, interior designer, and designer in the 20th century. He added “de Groot” to the end of his name in 1929. He spread the word of this addition claiming to be the grandson/great-grandson of a...
with paintings. He co-operated with the periodical Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, publishing articles on certain artists who were close to him. In 1923 he settled once again in Paris, where he joined his friends Zygmunt Menkes and Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
. His growing artistic fame and financial successes ended suddenly when he died of a heart attack. He did not live to take over the faculty of painting, which had been offered to him by the Academy of Fine Arts, Cologne, Germany.
Work
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
, Botticelli
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...
, Holbein and Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
. In the early stage of his career, he approached the style of the Nabis
Nabis
Nabis was ruler of Sparta from 207 BC to 192 BC, during the years of the First and Second Macedonian Wars and the War against Nabis. After taking the throne by executing two claimants, he began rebuilding Sparta's power. During the Second Macedonian War, he sided with King Philip V of Macedon and...
, through the manipulation of flat areas, enclosed within distinct contours and faded, slightly matte colors. For a brief period, he succumbed – like so many of his Parisian colleagues – to the exoticism and folk atmosphere of Brittany. He also borrowed certain motifs from Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
porcelain and Persian
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
miniatures. He painted views of Parisian back streets and boulevards on the Seine and, sporadically, took up New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
themes.
Even before World War I, some of his compositions were in line with the idyllic tradition represented by works of such artists as Poussin
Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...
, Claude
Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French Claude Gellée, , dit le Lorrain) Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French...
(called le Lorraine), Watteau
Antoine Watteau
Jean-Antoine Watteau was a French painter whose brief career spurred the revival of interest in colour and movement...
, and most of all Puvis de Chavannes
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was a French painter, who became the president and co-founder of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and whose work influenced many other artists.-Life:...
, whose Poor Fisherman at the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
inspired a number of Żak’s paintings and drawings. The Polish artist began to intensify the stylization of his figural silhouettes and faces. Żak’s Arcadia
Arcadia
Arcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan...
, inspired by original Italian and southern French landscapes as well as those by European art masters, was inhabited by people with a hermaphroditic beauty, undoubtedly linked to Żak’s fascination with the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
. Their physiognomies recall the profiles of ancient Greek art
Art in Ancient Greece
The arts of ancient Greece have exercised an enormous influence on the culture of many countries all over the world, particularly in the areas of sculpture and architecture. In the West, the art of the Roman Empire was largely derived from Greek models...
, with the nose angled straight from the forehead and distinctly outlined eyes, while the faces bear a languorous, nostalgic expression. Żak, like Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...
, by means of sophisticated drawing and a poetic imagination with a romantic tint, created a very special “human race” found only in the figures of his pictures.
House
A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...
s and masses of rocks were always composed with a decorative rhythm. Their refined combinations of broken colors and reserved expression distinguish these paintings. They enter an interesting dialogue with achievements of certain representatives of the German New Objectivity
New Objectivity
The New Objectivity is a term used to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it...
, and also some of the Italians from the Valori Plastici
Valori plastici
Valori plastici was an Italian magazine published in Rome in Italian and French from 1918 to 1922, edited by painter and art collector Mario Broglio and focused on aesthetic ideals and metaphysical artwork...
group, though by no means can we speak here of direct influences.
Around 1917-1920 social outsiders, the nostalgic loners who spend their lives in saloons or interiors with scanty furniture, replaced the earlier fishermen and their families, sailors, and merchants. Here we have a clear connection with the “miserable” trend of the young Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, such as his Saltimbanques of the blue period. At the same time, these sad themes are counterbalanced by representations of happy families in various configurations: a mother playing with a smiling child, a family playing with a puppet-theatre, etc. The paintings from his last period gain more light and life, while the artist does not eschew dissonances. Contours dissolve on the edges of bordering color areas and spot-lighting melts the surfaces of stylized forms.
Żak’s repertoire of forms may not be rich, but it is characteristic enough due to make his works immediately recognizable. His style inspired many Polish artists gathered around “Rhythm,” a group which co-created a Polish version of Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
. The important feature of Żak’s grammar of forms was his treatment of the human silhouette, which the painter endowed with elongated proportions that had little in common with those of the real models, a mannerist over-emphasis on contrapposto, and dance-like postures usually ascribed to marionettes or dummies rather than to people.
His late paintings seemed to open a new chapter in his oeuvre: he now began to draw on the color and painterly effects of the Impressionists
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
(primarily those of Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...
) once so much despised by him.
Exhibitions
During Zak's lifetime, his one-man shows were organized in Paris (1911, 1925) and Warsaw (1917). Apart from the Paris Salons (from 1904) and an exhibition of the Polish artists residing in Paris, which was organized in BarcelonaBarcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
(1912), his works appeared at the famous Armory Show
Armory Show
Many exhibitions have been held in the vast spaces of U.S. National Guard armories, but the Armory Show refers to the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art that was organized by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors...
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and Detroit, where he was the only Pole besides Elie Nadelman
Elie Nadelman
Elie Nadelman was an American sculptor, draughtsman and collector of Polish birth.-Early years:...
(1913), at the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
(1914), and at the Parisian exhibitions of the Association France-Pologne in Paris (1924). Moreover, he took part in exhibitions of the Society of Polish Artists “Sztuka” (“Art”), beginning in 1908, as well as those of the Polish Expressionists (later called Formists) before they formed an official group (Kraków
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
1913 and Zakopane
Zakopane
Zakopane , is a town in southern Poland. It lies in the southern part of the Podhale region at the foot of the Tatra Mountains. From 1975 to 1998 it was in of Nowy Sącz Province, but since 1999 it has been in Lesser Poland Province. It had a population of about 28,000 as of 2004. Zakopane is a...
1916) and after (Kraków 1917 and Lwów 1918). He exhibited in Warsaw as a member of the Polish Art Club (1917–1919), the New Group (1918), and Association of Polish Artists “Rhythm” in Kraków (1923) and Warsaw (1924).
The artist’s posthumous exhibitions occurred at the three Paris Salons and at Parisian galleries as well as in Warsaw and Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
(all in 1926), New York (1927), Buffalo
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
(1928), London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
(1929) and several more times in Paris, including at the Galerie Zak (1936, 1938). The last, run by the artist’s widow, enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most interesting galleries on the left bank of the Seine: it sponsored, among other things, the first exhibition by members of the Paris Committee, known as the Kapists
Kapists
Kapists or KPists , also known as the Colourists, were a group of Polish painters of 1930s who dominated the Polish artistic landscape of the epoch...
, several one-man shows of Polish and Jewish artists active in France, and Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
’s first Parisian one-man show.