Rafał Malczewski, THE RED HOUSE

57.2 x 73.6 cm - gouache on cardboard

signed on the left: Rafał Malczewski
On the reverse, a landscape sketch; additionally, at the bottom center, inventory numbers (in pen): E 1302; below, two labels with multiple numbers in circles; below, a number (in pencil): 81 [in a circle].
 
 

VAT: * An 8% VAT will be added to the hammer price in addition to other costs (in accordance with §12, point 3 of the Rules).

Rafał Malczewski (Kraków 1892 – Montreal 1965) studied agronomy, philosophy, and architecture in Vienna; he also attended the Academy of Fine Arts there, but he owed his artistic education primarily to his father, Jacek Malczewski. From 1917 to 1939, he lived permanently in Zakopane; he was a passionate mountaineer. In 1930, he left for a six-month stay in France. In December 1939, he made his way to France via Slovakia and Hungary, from where he subsequently traveled to Brazil and later to the United States. In 1942, he arrived in Montreal, where he settled permanently. Beginning in 1919, he exhibited frequently; from 1934 onward, he also exhibited as a member of the “Rytm” group. He painted primarily landscapes—of the Tatra Mountains, the Podhale region, views of small towns, and industrial Silesia, and later also of Brazil and Canada. In his paintings—deliberately primitivized and often imbued with a poetic and fairy-tale atmosphere—he is close to the art of naïve realism. Malczewski was also a writer, the author of articles on art, columns, essays, and memoirs of the Tatra Mountains and Zakopane, including “The Drug of the Mountains,” “The Mountains Call,” and “The Navel of the World,” a book written while he was already in Canada.