Zygmunt Menkes (1896 Lviv - 1986 Riverdale), Girl with a bouquet of flowers, circa 1928.

oil, canvas, 73 × 60 cm
Signed p. d.: "Menkes"

"Of Polish descent, Parisian by training, American by inspiration, Menkes is for me one of the few artists who can be completely "modern" without compromising the beauty of light, color and texture and what we have understood by painting since the days of Titian and Rembrandt. He is a superb painter."
Arthur Miller, review of an exhibition in Beverly Hills in the Los Angeles Times 1949

Some of Menkes' most common subjects are still lifes or female figures in interiors, and his paintings with the motif of flowers are exceptionally beautiful - the artist not only enjoyed painting them, but grew them himself in the garden of his Riverdale home. Throughout his life he remained true to his artistic credo: "I have always believed that only the harmony between the abstract values of plastic language and the inner and direct contact with life and nature (as well as a personal relationship to life) can only lead an artist to create a work of art. Without this harmony, only a laboratory experiment or a sentimental illustration is the result. This has always been true, and is even more obvious in our time. Exactly this translation of life and nature into the language of art, which he considers most essential, determines the artist's personal style. The purity and directness of this language is the yardstick by which only a work of art can be judged." Sigmund Menkes, quoted in Sigmund Menkes 1896-1986, Lipert Gallery, New York 1993, p. 19.