MELA MUTER [Maria Melania Mutermilch] (1876-1967), Portrait of a young woman, 1930s.

oil, canvas; 55 x 33 cm;
Signed l. g.: Muter;
On the back, author's inscription: MUTER / Tete de femme / No 10M (55 x 33); on the loom, repeated signature: Muter.
"I love every model I make, even the ugliest, and if I can't love it, I can't paint it," she said. - Mela Muter said in an interview with the New Journal in the 1920s. (s. 239). This short sentence by the artist is the source for Mela Muter's portraits, which include images of poor Brittany women, busy fishermen, maimed soldiers and famous artists, musicians and writers. The artist treats all of them equally, she does not beautify or flatter them, on the contrary, the images she paints almost expose the interior of the model and, as she herself mentions, show their essence. At the same time, the intimacy of these representations, emphasizes the deep emotional sensitivity of Mela Muter "...when one says, trying to make me a compliment - 'You create psychological portraits'. - I am overwhelmed with revolt! (...) I never ask myself whether the person in front of my easel is good, false, generous, intelligent. I try to capture and depict her, as I do with a flower, a tomato or a tree, to get into her essence: if I succeed, I express myself through the prism of her personality."
The energy that emanates from Mela Muter's paintings does not flow only from the strength of the personality of the character portrayed. It also stems, from broad and strong brushstrokes, bold color combinations and the use of the unpainted sub-painting as part of the work - for example, as its light (glow). This form, marked by critics, gives monumentality to the artist's works, at the same time the painter herself and the surrounding environment perceives: "It was Paris that gave me all the elements that make up my art. Here I even found my Slavic character, which in Poland I probably wouldn't even notice, but which here everyone readily notices in my canvases. And in this, I think, is the great strength of Paris: all the various raw materials we bring here with us are strengthened here and melted into a uniform alloy, a kind of solid and uniform metal," - said Mela Muter, and author Mela Muter. Fever of life Karolina Prewęcka added: "In those days [the 1920s], in that artistic Paris, it paid to be Slavic.
It was a brand that symbolized energy. (...) [Jean] Cocteau said that the Slavs were like lightning, the French like a machine, the Germans like plastic" (p. 235).
Mela Muter (actually Maria Melania Mutermilch, née Klingsland) completed a course at Milosz Kotarbinski's School of Drawing and Painting for Women in Warsaw and attended the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and Academie Colarossi in Paris. The artist considered herself self-taught, claiming,
that the real school of painting for her was only through contacts with prominent artists and their art. She lived permanently in Paris from 1901, obtaining French citizenship in 1927. In 1912 she became a member of the Paris-based Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
(Quotes for: Karolina Prewęcka, Mela Muter. Fever of Life, Warsaw, 2021; <https://www.muzeum.umk.pl/sztuka_polska/mela-muter>)