"Mann mit blauer Mütze," by Eugeniusz Zak—Part One

by Agnieszka Yass-Alston

[Editor’s note: This is an article released in two parts on the work of Eugeniusz Zak. The author, Agnieszka Yass-Alston, is an art historian and provenance researcher who specializes in the fate of artistic assets of Jewish art collectors in Krakow and the fate of the "oeuvre" of Jewish artists of  the "École de Paris."]

Eugeniusz Zak‘s painting, Mann mit blauer Mütze (Jeune homme au bonnet bleu), will be auctioned on December 10, 2016 by Ketterer Kunst in Münich (offered as Mann mit blauer Kapper), Auction 436 Modern Art I, Lot 253). (Fig. 1)

Fig. 1, Mann mit blauer Mütze

The emergence of this painting is the perfect occasion to explore a particularly important aspect in Eugeniusz Zak’s (1884-1926) oeuvre that partially facilitates provenance research of some of his paintings created between 1919-1923. In times past, unfortunately, it has not been examined correctly and thus led to confusion and misunderstandings especially due to the fact that a lot of his paintings were stripped of marks and labels and very often re-stretched into new frames. Crucial clarification of Zak’s artistic development is needed in order to understand the chronology of his oeuvre. Because these nuances have been missed and misinterpreted, they created perplexity in the ownership history of Zak’s artworks which are discussed in this essay.

As an important reminder, a lot of Zak’s paintings prior to the Second World War belonged to Jewish owners in Poland, Germany, and France. Since the 1980s, art collectors renewed their interest in the “École de Paris”. Zak’s paintings became more desirable, but unfortunately collectors did not pay much attention to their provenance.

That said, the appearance of Mann mit blauer Mütze constitutes a sensational event, as this picture

Fig. 2

was only known to art historians and collectors of works produced by members of the “École de Paris” as demonstrated by a reproduction in H. Ritter’s article “Ewige Romantik” in Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, published in Darmstadt, in 1925. (Fig. 2)

More than ten years later a similar picture’s reproduction appeared in “Wiadomości Literackie”, a weekly published in Warsaw in 1936. The article “W dziesiątą rocznicę śmierci Zaka” written by Zygmunt St. Klingsland, a Polish correspondent in Paris, commemorated the 10th anniversary of the death of Eugeniusz Zak (1882 – 1926).  Klingsland wrote the article as a reminder to his Polish audience about the great artist. It is the closing of the exhibit of Zak’s artworks organized by Zak’s widow Jadwiga at Galerie Zak in Paris that prompted Klingsland to write those few words, illustrated by Zak’s artworks in black and white reproductions including the painting titled Studjum [Study]. (Fig. 3)

In 2004, Barbara Brus-Malinowska published an extensive, and one would think, detailed catalog of Zak’s artworks. This publication accompanied a monographic exhibit of Zak’s oeuvre organized at the National Museum in Warsaw (December 2003 – February 2004). Brus-Malinowska included the painting in the catalog (No. 196, p. 150) stating that the reproductions from Ewige Romantik (Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration) and W dziesiąta rocznicę śmierci Zaka (Wiadomości Literackie) are the same paintings. As photographic support, she used a black and white photograph from the artist’s archive which is located at the National Museum in Warsaw (DI 99830). (Fig. 4)

Fig. 3 Studjum

Fig. 4

Unfortunately, important facts were missed in Brus-Malinowska’s research. In June 1927, Galerie Marcel Bernheim in Paris had organized an Exposition Rétrospective Eugѐne Zak (1884 – 1926). The catalog listed twenty-nine works by Zak including: Jeune homme au bonnet blanc (No. 10) and Jeune homme au bonnet brun (No.26). Regrettably, there are no reproductions of these two paintings in Bernheim’s catalog. 

With this information, an examination of Zak’s development as an artist must be brought to light, especially in the period between 1916 when he had to return to Poland (a relocation, prompted by the events of WWI in France where he had resided since 1902), and 1922 when he left for Germany and subsequently returned to Paris in early 1923.

Most likely in 1918, and at the latest in early 1919, Zak painted a Young Acrobat, a prototype picture to the following three versions of the Young Man in a Hat (blue, white, and brown). The picture was exhibited for the first time in the Annual Salon of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Warsaw, 1919 (Dec. 13, 1919 – Jan. 28, 1920). Later it was in the collection of Tadeusz Raabe of Warsaw and exhibited in 1926 during the posthumous Zak exhibit in Czesław Garliński’s Salon in Warsaw (presently it is still unknown if the prototype painting survived World War II). Probably, there was one more version of the Young Acrobat which was listed by Stefania Zachorska in her 1927 publication on Eugeniusz Zak. At that time, that painting was in William C. Bullitt’s collection (the archival documentation deposited at the National Museum in Warsaw indicates Bullitt as owner of Jeune acrobate, 1918). The painting was only once reproduced in the article Eugen Zak written by H. Ritter for Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration (vol. 50, 1922). (Fig. 5). In the National Museum in Warsaw there is a black and white photograph of the painting (ID 99828) in the artist’s archive.

It may be assumed that the Young Acrobat is one of the paintings that marked the beginning of the third creative phase in Zak’s artistic development. This is the time when Zak focused on one bigger, single human figure in a closed space of naked walls without any background disturbance. He began to paint lonely acrobats, drunkards, dancers, harlequins, magicians and various musicians. They are passive, disconsolate, dejected. The paintings emanate with melancholy, uncertainty, or perplexity. At that time, Zak lived in Częstochowa, a southern Polish town, far away from colorful, artistic Paris, where he likely heard tragic news about human fate during the world war. Therefore Zak’s romanticism of that time is very often linked to Watteau and his nestled-in lonely dreaming figures of social outcasts. 

Fig. 5

Mieczysław Wallis (Eugeniusz Zak in Sztuka Polska Dwudziestolecia. Wybór pism z lat 1921 – 1957) indicates two sub-periods within this phase; firstly when Zak focused on linear plasticity, secondly around 1924 he turned more to painterliness and colorism. The lines of the human figures are smooth and sensual. They gently intumesce into semicircular curves that oppose straight lines of walls’ corners, and objects such as a bench, a musical instrument, or a pipe. The forms are soft and elongated. There is a certain repetition of a rhythm within the composition of forms and lines that are smooth, long, and elegant (at that time, and also later upon his return to Paris, Zak exhibited with a group of Polish artists - Rytm). In this time, Zak’s figures are still outlined; as the contour disappeared, the intensely distinctive colors took over (after 1924). The paintings of this period emanate with characteristic atmosphere of elegance, fineness, and magicality, but also melancholy. Mieczysław Wallis (1927) and Stafania Zahorska (1927) wrote about the subtlety of Zak’s use of color emphasizing that he repeated the same compositions, meaning the same human figures in exact poses, or groups of figures in various colorations. These were Zak’s experiments with colors. Wallis described Zak’s use of toning practices by the use of white that suppresses color giving the impression of fresco tones. This phase is filled with coloristic dissonances, while naturalism is absent. Zak was leaning toward an expressionistic disharmony of colors in order to stress the strict decorative aspects of his paintings (after his return to Paris, Zak was close to Art Deco, as distinctively represented by Tamara Lempicka). The decorativeness of his paintings is expressed also in specifically closed composition built by rhythmic use of lines and surfaces that create flawless symmetry and balance. A fascinating aspect of this approach to decoratively closed composition was brought forth by Mieczysław Wallis (1927), who recalled that Zak did not like to show his paintings without frames, stating that once framed the artwork was completed. Zak often painted on an already framed canvas.

It is in this period that Zak ultimately defined his depicted human figures as airy, slim, and vertically extended. Their strongly narrow oval faces are reduced to their characteristic features as long dark eyebrows, elongated narrow eyes, straight overlong nose and sharp thin lips. Simple clothing tightly stretches on these slim figures, very often elongated by the use of a conical hat or pointed ballerinas. There is very intensive stylization of shape and movement. Exquisite postures and elegant gestures of the melancholic figures add to their eccentricity and withdrawnness.

(to be continued with Part Two)

List of illustrations:

Figure 1: Eugeniusz Zak, Mann mit blauer Kapper, Oil on canvas, 100 x 81 cm.
Figure 2: Eugeniusz Zak, Mann mit blauer Mütze (oil on canvas, c. 1922), illustration from Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, vol. 56, 1925;
Figure 3: Eugeniusz Zak, Studjum (oil on canvas, c. 1923), illustration from Wiadomości Literackie, nr 42, 1936;
Figure 4: Eugeniusz Zak, Młodzieniec w niebieskiej czapce, photograph in the National Museum Warsaw (ID 99830);
Figure 5: Eugeniusz Zak, Der junger Akrobat (oil on canvas, 1918/1919), illustration from Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, vol. 50, 1922;

Plaidoyer pour les artistes et intellectuels juifs disparus

Palais des Études, École Nationale Superieur des Beaux-Arts, Paris
Source: Wikipedia

Il faut se poser la question, même s’il est injuste de la poser : enfin de compte, les juifs étrangers, mal nourris, mal logés, mal élevés, de l’Ecole de Paris et des autres écoles de création artistique à travers l’Europe, ces juifs-là, qui gênaient les bien-pensants, purement et simplement, ont-ils été abandonnés à leur propre sort, en raison de ce qu’ils représentaient ?


Difficile à dire. Mais on ne peut pas sombrer dans une martyrologie sentimentaliste en ce qui les concerne. On n’est pas enclin non plus à croire en la munificence de l’homme face au désastre ; les comportements crapuleux existent bel et bien. Nous sommes dans l’obligation de rectifier le tir et de dire ce qu’il en est, d’après les documents, de démystifier le comportement des marchands, des courtiers, et de tous ceux dans le monde de l’art qui savaient pertinemment bien que ‘ces messieurs’ étaient bel et bien leurs clients, que les objets dont ils disposaient provenaient de collections spoliées, un point, c’est tout. Si, par contre, on prend au pied de la lettre tous les mémoires d’après-guerre produits par ces mêmes marchands et collectionneurs, il n’y a plus rien à dire, tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil. C’est dommage, beaucoup de gens ont été exterminés, pour rien, pour ce qu’ils étaient, et c’est bien malheureux, et on passe à autre chose. Glorifier les marchands et les collectionneurs dans un combat héroïque contre le Golgotha nazi, ça, non, il faut bien tirer un trait quelque part. Il faut que l’on tire et que l’on tire juste.

Par exemple, est-ce qu’on laisse Matisse tranquille ou non ? Que savait-il ? Pourquoi ne disait-il rien ? S’il existe des documents qui attestent de sa connaissance des rafles, des aryanisations, et des spoliations de ses propres œuvres—quelqu’un a dû lui dire ce qui se passait à Paris—quelles ont été ses réactions? Peut-être qu’il s’en balançait éperdument, lui aussi ? Un tableau, un dessin, ben, c’est un tableau, un dessin. Si je les perds, j’en refais d’autres. Il se peut que ceux qui se sentent les plus concernés par ces pertes sont les consommateurs de ses œuvres, ceux qui en profitent. Peut-être que les artistes sont indifférents au fait que leurs œuvres soient pillées. Mais, s’ils ne disent rien, que pouvons-nous dire ? Avons-nous le droit de nous prononcer sur la question ? Puisque l’on ne peut pas anticiper leur réaction, il faut au moins que l’on puisse créer un contexte, un cadre dans lequel se situe l’action. Pendant que Matisse peignait et dessinait à Nice, des centaines de collectionneurs d’origine juive se faisaient spolier, parmi les objets qu’ils ont perdus figuraient des œuvres créées par Matisse. Le régime auquel il a prêté son nom s’adonnait au pillage de ses œuvres. Purement et simplement. La même logique s’applique à Picasso, Braque, et d’autres artistes de renom, y compris le fasciste Vlaminck, les opportunistes comme Van Dongen, Derain, Dufy, et Dunoyer de Segonzac.

Il faut arriver à restituer aux artistes leurs parcours et leur persécution, de souligner les pertes physiques et intellectuelles, de rappeler à tous que les écrits des historiens continuent de passer sous silence l’anéantissement de toute une classe d’artistes et d’intellectuels, peut-être par ignorance, peut-être parce qu’ils pensent qu’en parlant des victimes de la déportation, ils se sont acquittés de toute responsabilité d’entrer dans les détails. Mais, cet oubli accidentel constitue en soi un déni inacceptable de la contribution de ces artistes et intellectuels juifs au patrimoine culturel et intellectuel non seulement de la France mais de l’Europe toute entière. Il faut le redire une fois pour toute : la libération des pays occupés par les Nazis fut une belle victoire, mais l’absence des retrouvailles aux terrasses des cafés qui avaient servi in extenso de salons et de salles à manger pour ces artistes en manque de tout, sauf d’inspiration et de cœur, résonne comme un écho dans un abîme dont la profondeur ne peut être mesurée.

Leur absence nous bouleverse et laisse un trou béant dans notre existence. C’est toute une mouvance artistique et intellectuelle qui a disparu de la planète. Et c’est une marque du succès du programme national-socialiste et de celui de ses alliés antisémites, bon ton bon goût. Oui, le goût a eu sa revanche, mais à quel prix !