Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 5

Arthur Kolnik
Expressionist Portrait

About the Item

Arthur Kolnik was born in Stanislavov, a small town in Galicia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, who was originally from Lithuania, worked as an accountant and his mother, who was originally from Vienna, ran a shop. In 1905, he discovered Yiddish literature in Czernowitz, on the occasion of the first conference on Yiddish language, which was organized by several writers including I. L. Peretz, Cholem Aleichem, Shalom Asch, and Nomberg. In 1909, Kolnik joined the School of Fine Arts in Krakow and took classes taught by Jacek Malezcewski and Joseph Mehoffer, a portrait painter and an artist who produced stained-glass windows in Fribourg (Switzerland). He was mobilized in the Austrian army in 1914. He was wounded in 1916 and repatriated to Vienna, where he met the Judaic painter Isidor Kaufmann. In 1919, Kolnik settled in Czernowitz, which was then annexed by Romania. There, he met writer and poet Itzik Manger and storyteller Eliezer Steinberg for whom he produced several illustrations. In 1920, Kolnik left for the United States, bringing fifty paintings with him, after he saw an advertisement in a Yiddish newspaper about an exhibition of Jewish Polish painters in New York. He found out that it was too late for his Judaica paintings to be exhibited in this exhibition, but he luckily met photographer Alfred Stieglitz who found him a gallery and organized an exhibition of his work. In 1931, Kolnik arrived in Paris with his family. For several years, he gave up painting. His wife taught piano and he drew for fashion journals. In 1934, he produced an album of twenty-four engravings, Sous le chapeau haut de forme (Underneath the Top Hat), which was prefaced by Henri Barbusse. He later produced twelve plates for Grosbart’s Les Personnages (The Characters). In 1948, he illustrated I.L. Peretz’ Métamorphoses d’une mélodie (Metamorphosis of a Melody). In 1940, he was interned at the Récébédou camp in Haute-Garonne with his wife and daughter. Following the war, Arthur Kolnik stayed in London, New York, Krakow, Vienna, Riga, and Buenos Aires, where he exhibited his work. He contributed to the journal Nos Artistes (Our Artists). In 1955, in New York, he was awarded the Chaban prize for his graphic work. In 1962, his fist solo exhibition took place in Paris at the Galerie Creuze. That same year, he traveled to Israel for the first time.
  • Creator:
    Arthur Kolnik (1890 - 1972, Polish, Ukrainian)
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 14 in (35.56 cm)Width: 10.5 in (26.67 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Surfside, FL
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU38210500712
More From This SellerView All
  • Jewish Prophet Rabbi German Expressionist Color Woodcut Israeli Early Bezalel
    By Jacob Steinhardt
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Hand signed in pencil, colored woodcut. Jacob Steinhardt 1887-1968 Steinhardt, Jakob, Painter and Woodcut Artist. b. 1887, Yaacov Steinhardt was born in the then remote, largely...
    Category

    20th Century Expressionist Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Woodcut

  • Lithograph Israeli Modernist Judaica, Kibbutz Boy, Bezalel Artist
    By Moshe Gat
    Located in Surfside, FL
    A signed and numbered lithograph print. Moshe Gat was born in Haifa in 1935. in 1952 he began his studies at the Bezalel School, in Jerusalem. In 1955 he returned to Haifa, where h...
    Category

    Mid-20th Century Expressionist Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Lithograph

  • Dutch Fantastic Modern Etching, Jan Mensinga Old Master Style Wine Maker, Grapes
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Jan Roelf Mensinga, Dutch artist, painter, graphic printmaker, watercolor artist. (born Leeuwarden 1924 - 1998 Amsterdam) Education: Mensinga attended an art studies from 1954 to 1...
    Category

    20th Century Expressionist Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Etching

  • Screenprint Serigraph Art Print WPA Artist NYC Frank Kleinholz Children Playing
    By Frank Kleinholz
    Located in Surfside, FL
    Frank Kleinholz (Brooklyn, 1901 - 1987) 1963 Children playing in park Screenprint, serigraph Born in Brooklyn, New York, Frank Kleinholz was a painter based in New York City whose work spanned several art movements including Expressionism and Social Realism. His work was strongly influenced by Max Beckmann, is a late survival of the social com­mentary expressionism of the WPA era; His early lithograph works were intensely personal and reflected the influence of the Depression and the World Wars, but his palette lightened as he increasingly focused on families and the bonds between adults and children. He was contemporary of William Gropper and Ben Shahn. As the son of a blind father and hard-working mother who supported the family with a delicatessen. From early childhood, he had to earn a living and sold newspapers and ran errands for local businesses. He graduated from Fordham Law School, and at age 23 was admitted to the bar. In the mid-1930s, while practicing insurance as well as law, he began oil painting and printmaking with teachers including Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Sol Wilson. He gained quick recognition and between 1941 and 1980 participated in numerous exhibitions including the National Academy of Design, the Brooklyn Museum and the Worcester Art Institute. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Kleinholz graduated Fordham Law School in 1923. In the 1930s, he began studying painting under Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Sol Wilson. He quickly rose to prominence with the inclusion of Abstract art in the Carnegie Institute exhibition of 1941. His painting Backstreet won a purchase prize by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Chronology His strongest influences were American Social Realists Reginald Marsh and Philip Evergood, the German Expressionists George Grosz and Kathe Kollwitz, the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, Jorge Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, and the early 20th century Paris Modernists. Described by Newsweek as a "Brooklyn-born Gauguin," Kleinholz focused on urban life in New York, Brooklyn and Coney Island, as well as intimate, social realist scenes of parents and children, watercolor paintings of flowers and birds, and sunbathers. His political works include anti war paintings...
    Category

    20th Century Expressionist Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Watercolor, Lithograph

  • Hungarian Modernist Judaica Etching Print Teffilin, Jewish Rabbi in Prayer
    By Janos Kass
    Located in Surfside, FL
    From very small edition of 15 on handmade mould made paper, with Jewish star Magen David watermark. From the deluxe boxed portfolio edition. Hand signed in pencil. János Kass (December 26, 1927 – March 29, 2010) was a Hungarian illustrator, printmaker, graphic designer, postage stamp designer, animated film director and teacher. Hungary's foremost graphic artist and book illustrator. Born in Szeged, he was the storyboard artist for the first fully digital animated film. This is done in a manner reminiscent of Saul Raskin, Tully Filmus and William Gropper, this is a modern take on a classic judaic subject matter, similar in style and tone to Abram Krol, Jakob Steinhardt, Josef Budko and Hermann Struck. Beginning his artistic studies at the Applied Art Academy, Kass finished in 1951 at the Academy of Fine Arts, a student of Gyula Hincz, György Kádár and György Konecsni. From 1956 to 1959 he held the Derkovits scholarship. From 1961 to 1962, he was assistant professor at the Book-Art Academy in Leipzig, Germany. Kass regularly took part in every major national exhibition at home and abroad. He had one-man shows in Italy (1963), Australia (1970) and Switzerland (1976). He participated in the Venice Biennial (1960), the Youth Biennial in Paris (1961), and Biennials in Lugano, Tokyo, Ljubljana, São Paulo and Buenos Aires, along with "Intergrafik" exhibitions in Berlin. He made many friends within the British graphic art fraternity while spending some months in London during 1980, working on one of the earliest, fully digitized computer-animated films, Dilemma, with John Halas. He had already won recognition with his illustrations and book designs. At the 1973 Leipzig book fair, his work was awarded the title of best illustrated book at the fair. This accolade was repeated at the Frankfurt fair in 1999. The 11-minute Dilemma was nominated at that year's Cannes Film Festival for the Golden Palm for Best Short Film, and is considered the first fully digital animated film. Kass was also a background artist for the "So Beautiful and So Dangerous" segment of Ivan Reitman Productions' 1981 animated feature film Heavy Metal. Kass' drawings, etchings and silk-screen prints were exhibited in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in 1989 and in 1990 at London Olympia. He later held a one-man show in Edinburgh. He illustrated something like 400 books, classical novels and children's stories, among them an elegant edition of Imre Madách's 19th-century drama The Tragedy of Man, published in Iain MacLeod's translation by Edinburgh's Canongate press in 1993. He won Hungary's highest artistic award, the Kossuth prize, and was an elected member of the Széchenyi academy. János Kass’ s numerous works can be found in the Hungarian National Gallery. Since 1985, the János Kass Gallery...
    Category

    1990s Expressionist Figurative Prints

    Materials

    Etching

  • Judaica Jewish Etching Hasidic Rabbi, Gaon, Genius, Vintage Chassidic Art Print
    By Paul Jeffay
    Located in Surfside, FL
    "Un savant." Chassidic scholar, Rosh Yeshiva with open book. Judaica, Jewish scenes from a shtetl ghetto. Saul Yaffie, a.k.a. Paul Jeffay, (1898–1957) was a Scottish Jewish artist. Known for his charming French street scenes as well as his judaica work. This is signed in the plate and dated 1931 in the print. This is done in a style similar to the works of the early Bezalel School artists Hermann Struck and Jakob Steinhardt. This lithograph, by artist Paul Jeffay depicts a Judaic Shtetl interior scene with great charm and sensitivity. Saul Yaffie was born in Blythswood, Glasgow on 29 April 1898. His mother was Kate Yaffie (née Karkonoski), and his father, Bernard Yaffie, was a master tailor. Like many Russian Jews, Kate and Bernard Yaffie fled persecution in Russia during a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms triggered by the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Saul's father was naturalised as a British citizen by the time that Saul himself was three; a Bernard Yaffie is recorded as living at Abbotsford Place in the old Gorbals, where the young Saul spent the early years of his childhood. The Yaffies were not unique in their situation: the Gorbals was the centre of Scotland's Jewish community and home to a large proportion of Glasgow's immigrants throughout the early 20th century. Over time, there was a movement to some of the more affluent communities in Glasgow, such as Pollokshields and Garnethill, as many Jewish families gradually improved their social and economic situation. Like these, the Yaffies also experienced a time of good fortune, moving to a more agreeable address on Sinclair Drive, Cathcart as Bernard's tailoring business prospered. Saul attended day classes in drawing and painting, modelling, and life drawing at The Glasgow School of Art from 1912 to 1919. During the First World War, he was required to interrupt his studies to serve in the King's Own Scottish Borderers in 1916/17. Although subject to military conscription, Yaffie reached the rank of corporal during his service. Prior to his conscription Yaffie engaged in munitions work, something that was recorded in the GSA's student registers. The post-war economic depression that affected the country during the 1920s, also affected the Yaffie family directly: Bernard Yaffie's business suffered greatly, and the family eventually emigrated to Canada. Saul did not emigrate with his family, choosing instead to stay in Europe, and relocate to jazz age Paris where he continued his artistic practice. Now married, Saul sought to escape persecution in Europe by returning to the UK before the Second World War with his wife, Estusia. The two settled in Manchester, but returned to France after the war. In his memoires ‘Bronze in My Blood’, German-born sculptor Benno Schotz...
    Category

    20th Century Expressionist Portrait Prints

    Materials

    Etching

You May Also Like

Recently Viewed

View All