Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 6

Regina Mundlak
Modernist Still Life, Jewish Polish Artist

Early 20th Century

About the Item

Regina Mundlak was born in a village near Lomza (NE Poland), into a poor Jewish family. In 1901 she went to Berlin to find work, together with her mother and sister, a highly talented violinist. Her extraordinary talent rapidly brought her to the attention of the Jewish artistic milieu. Her work so impressed Max Liebermann (1847–1935) that he decided to finance her education. However, even with his help, she had difficulty in making a living. Efraim Moses Lilien (1874–1925), who did not conceal his fascination with her talent, tried to help by publishing an open letter in Ost und West in 1902, appealing for support for her, but because of financial problems she finally had to give up her studies and return to her homeland. At the age of fifteen she was already very skilled in drawing. At first she primarily created realistic portrait studies. The works she published in 1902 showed her rare power of observation. Her pen-and-ink drawings were also greatly admired. As her subjects she most often chose characteristic Jewish types from Eastern Europe. She exhibited her works in Warsaw at the (Society for Promotion of Fine Arts) in 1902 and in 1903 and at the Aleksander Krywult Salon in 1903. In 1906, once again in Berlin, she exhibited her works at the Cassirer Salon. A review of this exhibition by Hermann Struck appeared in Ost und West. Like Lilien before him, he too wrote about her “phenomenal talent.” On the occasion of her exhibition, some of her drawings were reproduced in Ost und West. The development of her creative abilities in the years between Lilien’s letter and Struck’s review is noticeable. Drawings published in 1901 were portraits; compared to later works they evidence a skilful but still somewhat uncertain hand. The works created a few years later were characterized by a stronger and surer line. These works are also more developed: while the subject of her works remained the same, she now extended her interest in portraiture to the shape of the entire human body, presenting the figures in more elaborate environments. Looking at the reproductions, one might conclude that she was interested in nothing but Jewish life in the Diaspora. There is a propensity to show the faces of older people, which she represented with great perspicacity with respect to the changes brought about by the passage of time. She also frequently drew children, portraying them with much realism, without any trace of sentimentality or mawkishness. Her passion in presenting Jewish merchants, craftsmen, women, children, men, hasidim, and old people studying Talmud is almost documentary. In Berlin she studied under Adolf Mayer and Lovis Corinth (1858–1925); she also referred to Hermann Struck (1876–1944) as her teacher. Before WWI she spent some time in Paris, where she created her first oils. In these she demonstrated a similar inclination to realism as in her drawing, the themes of her paintings also remaining the same. In the years between the wars her interests became relatively wider and she began creating open-air compositions. However, she most frequently painted portraits and figural scenes in a shallow, undeveloped space or on a flat and neutral background. An important quality of her oil painting is the richness of texture. In the interwar years she maintained her own studio in Warsaw, participating in exhibitions of art in Warsaw in 1921, 1922, 1938, and in ?ód? in 1921. In 1928, she had a one-woman exhibition in Berlin. In 1942 she was probably deported from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp. Though a very talented artist, known in the milieu of Jewish artists in Berlin at the beginning of the twentieth century, she remained almost completely forgotten. She may be criticized for a certain conservatism and lack of interest in modern trends in art, of which she said: “I don’t understand modern art, it is totally alien to me, I haven’t tried to paint in a different way just as I can’t try to live in a different way”. However, her work is important, both as a documentation of the “exotic” world of East-European Jews and for its intrinsic artistic values.
  • Creator:
    Regina Mundlak (1887, Polish)
  • Creation Year:
    Early 20th Century
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 21.5 in (54.61 cm)Width: 16.75 in (42.55 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Surfside, FL
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU38212251482
More From This SellerView All
  • Enid Munroe Mid Century Modernist Oil Painting Still Life with Fruit and Bread
    By Enid Munroe
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Genre: Modern Subject: Kitchen still life with pineapple, sourdough bread and lemons Medium: oil paint, done in a sgraffito, impasto somewhat brutalist technique Surface: board Country: United States Dimensions: 18 X 24 Being sold unframed Enid Munroe re-establishes the aesthetic worth of ordinary manufactured objects within the basic form language of Cubism. In her painting the artist uses trompe-l'oeil to render her composition, involving realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions. Enid Munroe is an artist and teacher who is well known regionally for her paintings, works on paper and Gold leaf, silver leaf, trompe l’oeil collage and assemblage series. She has been included in numerous invitational and juried exhibitions both nationally and regionally. Her works are in leading public, corporate and private collections including the Brooklyn Museum and the National Museum of American Art. Munroe cites painter Georgia O’Keeffe as one her influences and sources of inspiration. “Georgia O’Keeffe really helped lift the concept of women as artists,” stated Munroe. Munroe lived and worked in Mexico, Japan and Italy before settling in Connecticut. She is the author of An Artist in the Garden: A Guide to Creative and Natural Gardening (Henry Holt & Co, 1994) and has been active in regional art events including the founding of the annual Pequot Library...
    Category

    20th Century American Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • Colorado Woman Abstract Expressionist Oil Painting Modernist Still Life, Fruit
    By Ruth Todd
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Ruth Todd (1909-2006, American Woman Artist) one of Colorado’s most prominent avant-garde artists and played a significant role in Colorado’s art history. Known for painting and collage. Still life with lemon and banana on kitchen table. Ruth Thomas Todd was born in 1909 in Sanford, North Carolina. She arrived in New York City in the 1930s where she began her career as a fashion model supporting herself as she attended classes at the Art Students League. For reasons of health she moved to Colorado Springs to treat her condition. During her recuperation she started to draw and studied under famous American abstract painter Robert Motherwell, who was teaching at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at the time. By the 1950s, her career as an abstract expressionist painter was blooming. She was one of Colorado’s most visible and avant-garde artists. Ruth married Littleton Todd, a poet and a woodworker. In 1953, Todd traveled to Europe (Paris, France) to study art and to paint. Littleton Todd opened a design studio in Denver where he manufactured and sold modern furniture. She would incorporate sawdust and other found materials from the workshop imbued with oil paint into her abstract work to create unique topographies and patterns. She showed at numerous Gilpin County Art Exhibitions, the Denver Art Museum, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Women’s College, the University of Colorado, Boulder, the Colorado State Fair, and the Jewish Community Center. Among the Colorado Modernists that she exhibited with were Vance Kirkland, Frank Vavra...
    Category

    1950s Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board

  • Still Life with Bread and Vegetables Oil Painting
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Classic still life composition of bread, tomatoes, radishes and beans on kitchen counter. signed illegibly.
    Category

    20th Century Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

  • Jerusalem Samovar Israeli Judaica Eliezer Weishoff Oil Painting Bezalel Artist
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Eliezer Weishoff (Israeli, 20th century) Still life of kettle (Russian samovar) over a warmer, 1973 Acrylic or oil on canvas Signed, dated and signed ...
    Category

    1970s Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Acrylic, Oil, Canvas

  • Post Impressionist Oil Painting Still Life with Fruit William Meyerowitz WPA Art
    By William Meyerowitz
    Located in Surfside, FL
    William Meyerowitz (1887 - 1981) Oil painting on canvas Depicting a still life scene with fruit bowl, bananas, flowers and quilt. Post Impressionist oil painting. Hand signed low...
    Category

    1930s American Modern Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Canvas

  • Still Life Oil Painting Betsy Podlach American Post Feminist Modernist Art
    By Betsy Podlach
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Betsy Podlach (American, born 1964.) Still life with Tin Cup, 1996 17.5 X 16.5 inches. Framed it measures 18.25 X 17.25 Betsy Podlach graduated from Harvard, cum laude, (she studied at Harvard with Alfred Decreido and William Reimann as well as Carlos Fuentes continuing her studies at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture, Ms. Podlach was awarded an art fellowship and residency at The International School of Art in Umbria, Italy. Betsy Podlach is an American painter who considers the Italian Venetians and the american abstract expressionist painters her mentors. The two painters she is most inspired by are Titian and Jackson Pollock, Both use the picture plane and abstraction and space, light, movement and form to communicate a physicality built entirely on the principals of painting, in the “classical” sense of a flat plane and lines, color, shape, space and light applied to that flat surface to create magic – light, space, form, emotion, force, movement, the physical and the spiritual. She describes her work as a figurative version of abstract expressionism. She was influenced by many of the abstract expressionists from the NY school...
    Category

    1990s American Modern Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil

You May Also Like
  • Mid-Century Tablescape in Orange. Oil on Canvas on Board.
    Located in Cotignac, FR
    Mid-century tablescape in orange, oil on canvas on board, presented in a custom built red wooden caisse, by Italian artist Matilde Sacchi. Sacchi is a 20th century artist known for ...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Board, Oil, Canvas

  • Vintage Mid-Century Modern Swedish Still Life Oil Painting - Fish & Flowers
    Located in Bristol, GB
    FISH & FLOWERS Size: 47 x 62 cm (including frame) Oil on Canvas Laid onto Board A characterful mid-century modernist style still life oil composition, painted onto canvas. At the h...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Board, Canvas

  • Oval Still Life - Oil on Canvas - Mid-20th Century
    Located in Roma, IT
    Oval Still Life is an artwork realized by an unknown in the mid-20th centry. Oil on canvas mounted on board. 37 x 49 cm ; 53 x 65 cm with frame. Good conditions!
    Category

    Mid-20th Century Modern Figurative Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil, Board

  • Mid Century Still Life with Apples and Pitcher Original Oil on Artist's Board
    Located in Soquel, CA
    Mid Century Still Life with Apples and Pitcher Original Oil on Artist's Board Vibrant still life by C. (Clarence) Leslie Oursler (American, 1913-1987). Classic American impressionis...
    Category

    1950s Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Canvas, Oil, Illustration Board

  • Snow Shed: Framed Cityscape Oil Painting on Panel of Brooklyn New York in Winter
    By Robert Goldstrom
    Located in Hudson, NY
    Small and graphic, cityscape painting on panel of Brooklyn, New York skyline with the Williamsburg Savings Bank building in the background against a pale blue winter sky Painted in 2...
    Category

    Early 2000s Modern Landscape Paintings

    Materials

    Oil, Canvas, Board

  • Mid Century Modern White Lilies in Blue Vase Still Life by Marianne A. Butt
    By Marianne A. Butt
    Located in Soquel, CA
    Bold and energetic mid-century modern floral still-life by San Mateo, California artist Marianne A. Butt (American, 20th Century), c.1965. Vibrant white lilies in cobalt blue vase po...
    Category

    1960s Modern Still-life Paintings

    Materials

    Cardboard, Oil, Canvas

Recently Viewed

View All