Lot 56 D

This self-portrait presents the Polish painter as a young woman in a self-assured pose with her curious and questioning gaze directed towards the viewer. Presumably created around 1911, her youthful features do not convey the experience she had already gathered during the ten years since her move from Warsaw to Paris. After continuing to study art in Paris – at the Académie Colarossi, among other places – she first focused her attention on the works of van Gogh, Cezanne and Vuillard. But she soon pursued her own path. The artist developed an expressive power, a colouristic diversity and a feel for the psychology of her sitters that runs throughout her entire oeuvre. Even during the early years of her career, she was already a sought-after portraitist of the jeunesse dorée, the intellectual scene and the poor people of Paris – and in 1911 she became a member of the Salon d’Automne alongside Metzinger and de Chirico. Her numerous exhibitions over the following decades reflect her success from the period before her work became forgotten in the course of the Second World War. From the 1960s Muter’s work once again became a focus of galleries in New York, Paris and Cologne – and this was important not least for the renewed attention devoted to her work in the art scene of her native Poland.