HANNA WEYNEROWSKA KALI (Polish, 20th Century). Infanta. Oil on canvas. 32 x 24 inches (81.3 x 61.0 cm). Signed upper lef...

Description

HANNA WEYNEROWSKA KALI (Polish, 20th Century)
Infanta
Oil on canvas
32 x 24 inches (81.3 x 61.0 cm)
Signed upper left: Kali
Titled on label verso: Infanta

PROVENANCE:
Mr. Jack Wojewski, Dallas.

Infanta exemplifies the distinctive and striking portrait style of the mid-20th-century Polish painter Hanna Weynerowska Kali, who reinterpreted Old Master subjects with graphic linearity and patterning. Part neo-Mannerist, part Surrealist, her portraits feature bust-length sitters with elongated faces, flattened bodies in simple black tunics, and prominent hands--whether folded, uplifted, cupped, or clasped in prayer. Many of her portraits directly quote Renaissance paintings, such as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Domenico Ghirlandaio's Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, and Rogier van der Weyden's Portrait of a Lady. Many also exhibit areas of meticulously applied texture, a counterbalance to the otherwise smooth surrounding planes. In Infanta, for example, the sitter's face is composed of impastoed dots, her hair of impastoed stripes, and her collar of impastoed flowers.

What little is known about Kali is rather dramatic. With the German invasion of Poland in 1939, she abandoned her studies at the Art Academy in Warsaw and joined the underground resistance movement, serving as a lieutenant in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Soon after, the Germans arrested Kali and sent her to a prison camp; she ultimately fled to Belgium, where she continued her art training at the Royal Art Academy. In 1950 Kali immigrated to Canada and became a national success; several of her paintings appeared in international art exhibitions in Brazil and Venezuela. Kali died in 1998 in San Francisco, her home for over four decades.


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