Léopold Kretz (1907-1990) Sitting nude - ink on paper

About this piece

Good work made by Léopold Kretz. A woman sits loosely on a stage, her legs dangling over the border, resting her arms on her thighs, her hands layed over each other. She wears a headscarf and she looks down, her head slightly sideways.
She is relaxed and the whole breaths a certain intimacy, they are at work, the artist and his model.

The work is made in ink on paper, in part with the pin and partially set up with the brush.
It's signed in black ink on the right; 'Kretz'.

Provenance: - Galerie Malaquais, Paris

Biography:
Léopold Kretz was born in 1907 in Lvov, in Poland. He learned drawing in a private academy where his teacher was Novakowski, an Ukrainian painter who belonged to the Romantic Polish school. At the age of nineteen, he entered the Krakow Fine-Arts School where he studied under Dunikovski, the sculptor and a close friend of Bourdelle.

Armed with a scholarship paid by a local count, he went to Paris in 1931 and started working in the Landowski-Gaumont studio at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and in Bourdelle’s studio at La Grande Chaumière. Later he teached at the same Art Academies.
He became close friends with Constantin Brancusi, which he met in the studio from Bourdelle such as other artists like Malfray, Pimienta and Maillol. Brancusi and Kretz also became neighbours.

Kretz started exhibiting in 1931 at the Salon des Tuleries and Salon d'Automn.

During WWII he served in the Polish-French army and got wounded. He went into the resistance and eventually he had to go underground for a long time. As a result he only was able to draw for a long time. After the war, he received the French nationality.

He had a leading role in the art world. In 1954 he was commissioned by the Department of Fine Arts of the City of Paris to create the three stone archangels of the Fontaine Notre Dame, in the apse of the cathedral. He belonged also to the "Group of Nine" in 1963.

Kretz received many awards, including the Prix Rodin. He was also knighted.

His work can be found in numerous public (museums) and private collections, inside and outside France.

Literature: Bénézit, vol. 8 (2006), p. 85-86.

Condition

Good