Maria Melania Mutermilch (1876 – 1967)

Maria Melania Mutermilch. ELISABETH, ZACHARIA AND SAINT JEAN-BAPTIST CHILD

Prace Meli Muter wyjątkowo obrodziły w tym sezonie. Opis katalogowy dość dobrze wyjaśnia pochodzenie tych prac.

Maria Melania Mutermilch, CHILD VIRGIN WITH HOLY AND TWO PRAYER CHARACTERS

Lot 24. MELA MUTER (1876-1967) MELA MUTER (1876-1967)
ELISABETH, ZACHARIA AND SAINT JEAN-BAPTIST CHILD (RECTO)
CHILD VIRGIN WITH HOLY AND TWO PRAYER CHARACTERS (BACK)
Oil on double-sided panel. Signed lower left on one side and right on the other. Double sided oil on panel; signed lower left and right. 142 X 122 CM – 55 7/8 X 48 IN. PROVENANCE: Acquired in the 1980s from Fressynette Billon in Les Angles (Gard) by the present owner. Private collection, France.
This work belongs to a cycle of large double-sided compositions – at least four according to Fressynette Billon – which the artist’s specialists agree that they were painted by Mela Muter in the 1940s and 1950s. Taking as their theme the life of Christ and his precursors, they are painted on panels coated with gesso, which gives them the matt appearance of a fresco. One side of this work can be compared to a painting by Mela Muter presented by Christie’s, Tel Aviv, 6 April 2002, lot 45 and, for a composition belonging to the same cycle, to a double-sided painting presented by Sotheby’s, London, 30 November 2016, lot 53.
“The technique often employed by Mela Muter achieves very special effects. From one brushstroke to the next the canvas remains white and naked, an area where the reasonable dream of memory freely restores hue and tone.”
Robert Rey, Mela Muter, Catalogue d’exposition, Paris, Galerie Joseph Billet, s.é., Paris : 1924, n. p.
“I think that Mela Muter has reasoned her art as a painter and poet, which is not limited, which only specifies its measure in her ambition to instruct the world of the secret of bringing everything to its lyrical value, an ambition more pressing than that of limiting these chances of lyricism (which are in fact universal) to a few occasions arbitrarily given as exemplary among all. …] Mela Muter, from the very first days of her happy and laborious career, was one of those innovators who were the enemies of false originality, artists and poets who, as Picasso said, influenced each other in turn, and one of whose high aims was to bring art back to life. This is why Mela Muter’s art, freed from the sour feelings of her immediate predecessors, is not literally a theme of joy, out of the universal rhythm. …] No one better than Mela Muter, far from having recourse to any other art than her own, will have warmly lavished these calm effusions fixing as an ideal point the direct properties of shapes and colours and what commands the world of words. Orphic realism which is enough, even if the author, painter for poet, claims to have some prefiguration of a sovereign future.”
André Salmon, “The Painting of Mela Muter”, in Literary Poland, December 15, 1933, No. 87, p. 5. Estimate 20,000 – 30,000 euro. Tajan. 11/24/20. Sold 58,000 euro

Stefania Ordyńska – Morawska (1882 – 1962)

Stefania Ordyńska – Morawska. BOUQUET DE FLEURS DANS UN VASE VERT

Prace tej artystki są umiarkowanie obecne w Polsce na aukcjach. Dominują chyba podobne martwe natury kwiatowe. Wciśnięcie wazonu z kwiatami w ciemny róg pokoju daje mi wrażenie ponurości. Pejzaże tej malarki są chyba znacznie lepsze.

Lot 21. STEFANIA ORDYNSKA-MORAWSKA (1882-1968). BOUQUET DE FLEURS DANS UN VASE VERT. Huile sur toile Signée ‘Ordyn’ en bas à droite Oil on canvas; signed ‘Ordyn’ lower right 54 X 65 CM – 21 1/4 X 25 5/8 IN. PROVENANCE Collection particulière, France. Estimate 500 – 700 euro. Tajan. 11/24/20. Not sold