Zygmunt MENKES (1896-1986), Still life with fruit

oil, canvas; 65.5 x 55 cm;
Signed p. d.: Menkes;
On verso on canvas, oval stamp of Paris painting supplies company: TOILES & COULERS / EXTRA FINES / LUCIEN LEFEBVRE-FOINET / PARIS / 19, RUE VAVIN & 2, RUE BRÉA; on upper loom strip, paper sticker: Dr. And Mrs. Harold Golton / 3728 Winterbourne Road (print).

Artist from the École de Paris circle who settled in Paris around 1923. In the mid-1930s he moved to the United States, eventually settling in Riverdale. The indicated time, the mid-1930s, is also the symbolic boundary of two periods in Sigmund Menkes' work. Compared to his earlier formally convergent compositions with the still life with pineapple on offer, during his stay in America, the soft impressionistic-povistic way of painting filled with definitively undefined contours, elements with characteristic color tones, gives way to sharp lines and intense colors such as blue, green, red and black. The presented canvas by Zygmunt Menkes was probably created in the 1930s, as indicated by the use of a sub-painting from France and the impressionistic way in which the whole composition is built up.