Mela mother

Mela Muter (actually Maria Melania Mutermilch ; * 1876 in Warsaw , † 1967 in Paris ) was a Polish-French painter of Jewish descent who lived and worked mainly in France.

Life

Mela Muter was born into the wealthy, assimilated Jewish merchant family Klingsland. Her father, who ran a trading company at 129 Marszałkowska Street in Warsaw, was a major art patron. In 1899 Muter married the art critic and writer Michał Mutermilch (the couple separated in 1914). In the same year she started to attend the drawing and painting school for women of Miłosz Kotarbiński in Warsaw. In 1901 she moved to Paris. She attended courses at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Académie Colarossi , but as a young mother mainly trained herself. Between 1911 and 1914 she visited Spain several times. Muter was integrated into the circle of the Parisian elite of artists and intellectuals at the time. She was closely associated with artists from the École de Paris . Muter was friends with Romain Rolland , Anatole France , Arthur Honegger , Edgar Varèse and Auguste Perret (who designed their house). Of the Polish artists, Henryk Sienkiewicz , Władysław Reymont and Bronisław Huberman were closest to her.

From 1902 her pictures were exhibited regularly in Paris, Krakow , Lemberg and Warsaw. She had her first solo exhibition in 1912 at the José Dalmau gallery in Barcelona . From the same year she was a member of the Société nationale des Beaux-Arts . She exhibited with the Société (1902–1905, 1909–1913) and was regularly represented at the major Parisian salons: at the Salon des Indépendants (1905, 1910, 1926, 1934) at the Autumn Salon (1905, 1909, 1911) –1913, 1920, 1923–1927, 1932, 1934, 1936–1938) and at the Salon des Tuileries (1924–1927, 1929–1931). Her pictures were shown in the Tannhäuser Gallery in Munich (1911), the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh (1921, 1926, 1934) and at the Venice Biennale (1927). She had other solo exhibitions in Paris at Drouet (1926), Billiet (1927), Bellier (1960), in Cologne in the Gmurzynska Gallery (1965–1967), in New York City in the Hammer Gallery (1967) and in Geneva in Petit Palais (1977).

From 1917 to 1920 she lived with the socialist Raymond Lefebvre (1891-1920), whom Stalin later murdered. She was the last love of Rainer Maria Rilke , whose letters to her are known. In 1923 the Warsaw Galeria Zachęta organized a large solo exhibition of her works. After her father's death, she converted to Catholicism in 1924 ; her godparents were Lili and Władysław Reymont . In 1927 Muter received French citizenship. During the Second World War , she hid in the south of France, including ( Avignon ). In 1945 she returned to Paris, where she lived until her death. She continued to paint, albeit less and less because of deterioration in her eyesight.

plant

At the turn of the century, Muter painted symbolic landscapes, portraits and figural scenes. From 1902, her pictures show the influence of the Pont-Aven school . Cubist and geometric structures by Paul Cézanne can be found in the landscape paintings that were created before the First World War . In her portraits she developed a post-impressionist style with warm, sunny, brown-red colors. Vincent van Gogh and Edouard Vuillard were the models . In addition to members of the French bourgeoisie, she also painted portraits and scenes of the poor, the sick and the elderly. An extensive archive on Muter can be found in the emigrant archive of the Toruń library . An important collection of her works is in the Museum of the University of Toruń . Wojciech Fibak's collection includes 33 oil paintings and 14 drawings.

References and comments

1. ↑ So Klingsland promoted the writers Leopold Staff , Jan Kasprowicz and Władysław Reymont
2. ↑ Joanna Olczak-Ronikier : In the garden of memory. A European family of the century. Berlin 2007, p. 59f.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} acc. Małgorzata Kitowska-Łysiak, detailed biography ( memento of the original from January 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Culture.pl, Art History Institute of the Catholic University of Lublin , December 2001 (in English) 

literature

• Władysława Jaworska, Agnieszka Morawińska u. a., Malarstwo polskie w kolekcji Ewy i Wojciecha Fibakow ( Polish painting in the Ewa and Wojtek Fibak Collection ), Auriga Verlag, ISBN 83-221-0623-8 , Warsaw 1992, p. 58ff.
• Mela mother. Malarstwo - Peinture, ed. Mirosław Supruniuk, (Catalog zbiorów Muzeum Uniwersyteckiego w Toruniu - Catalog d'Oeuvres du Musee Universitaire a Toruń, ed. Mirosław Supruniuk, Sławomir Majoch, t. 1), Toruń 2010, ISBN37978-83-89 82-4
• photos