1885 -1942 · Warsaw, Paris and School of Paris

Structured portraits, dense color and fidelity to reality make Roman Kramsztyk an essential figure of the School of Paris and Polish Jewish modernity.

Roman Kramsztyk was born in Warsaw in 1885 and died there in 1942. Coming from an assimilated Jewish family of the Polish intelligentsia, he studied with Zofia Stankiewicz, Miłosz Kotarbiÿski and Adolf Edward Herstein, then at the Krakow Academy in the workshop of Józef Mehoffer and in Munich with Ludwig von Herterich. From 1909, Paris became his main place of life, with a long interruption in Warsaw between 1915 and 1924. Kramsztyk participated in the circles of the Paris School while remaining involved in Polish artistic life; in 1909, Paris became his main place of life, with a long interruption in Warsaw between 1915 and 1924. Kramsztyk participated in the circles of the Paris School while remaining involved in Polish artistic life; in 1922, he was among the founders of the Rytm company. He refused complete abstraction. Cézanne, classicism and the tradition of portraiture nourish a painting where construction, color and resemblance remain inseparable. The Portrait of Jan Lechoÿ presents the poet with a concentrated intellectual presence: face, hands and costume are simplified, but never neutralized. Kramsztyk also paints nudes, Mediterranean landscapes and portraits of the cultural elite. Surprised in Poland by the Second World War, he is locked up in the Warsaw ghetto. His latest drawings document the hunger, exhaustion and dignity of the inhabitants. He was assassinated on August 6, 1942 during the Great Deportation to Treblinka. A considerable part of his work disappeared in the war, giving the paintings preserved exceptional historical and human value. The "Roman Kramsztyk" selection notably compares Portrait of Jan Lechoÿ. His reading favors light.

Kramsztyk constructs the portrait without cooling the presence: the form orders the face, but the gaze retains its entire history.