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Mela Muter
Actual name: Maria Melania Mutermilch nee Klingsland. Born in 1876, Warsaw, died in
1967, Paris.
Muter came from an affluent Jewish family assimilated in Poland.
Throughout its history the family had remained loyal to the Polish
independence tradition, however, Muter she spent most of her life
abroad, primarily in France. She maintained loose contacts with Polish
artists in Paris, who were a part of the international École de Paris
circle, though she did exhibit with them (e.g. at the Galerie du Musée
Crillon).
She attended a yearlong course at Milosz Kotarbinski's Drawing and
Painting School for Women in Warsaw. In 1901 she departed for Paris.
Years later this would turn out to be a permanent resettlement, and
Muter accepted French citizenship in 1927. Once there she attended
classes at the Académie Colarossi and the Académie de la Grande
Chaumiére, though she did neither regularly as she was a young mother at
the time. Generally, in an academic sense, she was self-taught. In 1902
she began to present her works at the annual Parisian Salons; she also
sent works to be exhibited at a number of domestic group exhibitions
(held in Krakow, Lviv, and Warsaw). A series of solo exhibitions began
with a presentation at Barcelona's Galeria José Dalmau in 1912, and she
became a member of the Parisian Societé Nationale des Beaux-Arts the
same year. She painted a great deal and presented her work often in
Paris, less regularly in Munich and Pittsburgh. She had important solo
exhibitions at the Chéron Gallery (1918) and Druet Gallery (1926 and
1928) in Paris, and in Poland at the Towarzystwo Zachety Sztuk Pieknych /
Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts (1923).
Her personality was shaped by broad and direct contacts with members
of the Parisian artistic and intellectual elite. The painter's
acquaintances included Paris-based Polish artists and authors like
Leopold Gottlieb, Wladyslaw Reymont, Leopold Staff, Stefan Zeromski, and
Henri Barbusse, Artur Honneger, Auguste Peret (who designed the
artist's home), Diego Rivera, Romain Rolland, and finally Rainer Maria
Rilke, who became friends with Muter towards the end of his life. The
artist painted portraits of many of these individuals, including Staff,
Zeromski, and Jan Kasprowicz. Two men with whom she shared strong
emotional ties played important parts in her life. They were Michal
Mutermilch, an aesthetician and Parisian correspondent for the Polish
press to whom she was married between 1899 and 1922 (though they
actually parted in 1914), and Raymond Lefebvre, a Socialist activist who
died tragically in the USSR in 1920. The painter's brother, Zygmunt
Klingsland, was a well-known art critic.
Muter was influenced most strongly as an artist by her numerous
travels, particularly her many plein-airs in Brittany and Spain.
Affected by the experiences she gathered in this way, she quickly
abandoned the luminous, symbolist aesthetic evident in her early works,
which consisted of landscapes and above all portraits of her friends, an
example of which is the PORTRET POETY LEOPOLDA STAFFA / PORTRAIT OF THE
POET LEOPOLD STAFF (1903). The transformations that occurred in her art
over a period of just a few years can be seen clearly by comparing two
works: the nocturnal, Whistleresque AUTOPORTRET W SWIETLE KSIEZYCA /
SELF-PORTRAIT BY MOONLIGHT (c. 1899-1900), and her depiction of Aurelia
Reymont (c. 1907). The difference between these canvasses is enormous.
The first, dating from when she was still in Warsaw, is dominated by
dark colors, painted smoothly, almost glazed, which nevertheless does
not deprive it of lyricism. The second, painted in Paris, is almost
impressionistically bright, with boldly highlighted, large, soft areas
of warm color, and underlines the psychological characteristics of its
female subject in its close examination of her face. In France Muter
developed an interest for a variety of phenomena. She was intrigued by
the work of artists of the Pont-Aven school, which found reflection in
some of her works from the subsequent period - strongly, confidently
constructed paintings that remained intimate at the same time (BRETONKA Z
DZIECKIEM / BRETON WOMAN WITH A CHILD, 1911).
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Some of these compositions are readily
associated with the paintings of Gauguin due to the approximate
depiction of her softly modeled human figures and the abstract nature of
her flat areas of color. Others very directly bring to mind the art of
Wladyslaw Slewinski (PEJZAZ MORSKI / SEASCAPE, c. 1913-14). In her
mature period, Muter also created works influenced by a powerful
fascination with the art of Paul Cézanne (landscapes and still lifes),
Vincent van Gogh (landscapes), Edouard Vuillard (intimate portraits of
old men and women, impoverished individuals, children). It appears that
the lessons of the latter exerted the greatest impact. Muter and
Vuillard shared an interest in everyday human situations, intimate
auras, muted color schemes, and a tendency to build patches of color
from smaller pieces (MACIERZYNSTWO / MOTHERHOOD, 1909). It was only in
her still lifes that she exposed her sensitivity to the beauty of the
world, expressed in a varied palette and in passionate color fantasias
(MARTWA NATURA Z JABLKAMI / STILL LIFE WITH APPLES, 1918). Her still
lifes confirm her class as a painter and are noteworthy for their
economy of components, clear, thought-out structure, and purity of
sumptuous hues (e.g. MARTWA NATURA Z KRABAMI / STILL LIFE WITH CRABS).
These works constitute perhaps the best and fullest embodiment of the
artist's credo: "one should be reticent in art, refrain from presenting
all the details, and concentrate solely on important things". In later
years she created a series of more expressive compositions, which are
impressive for their strong, clear, almost monumental structure (see
PEJZAZ Z TRAYAS - CZERWONE SKALY / TRAYAS LANDSCAPE - RED ROCKS, 1921, a
work that overtly glorifies the power of nature). Muter also painted
Fauvist views of southern France and the Seine (oils and especially
watercolors), modeled after those of Dufy and Marquet. Her ports, barges
moored at riverbanks, and tugboats are seen from above (BARKI NA KANALE
ST-MARTIN W PARYZU / BARGES ON THE ST. MARTIN CANAL IN PARIS, c. 1922;
PEJZAZ Z COLLIOURE / COLLIOURE LANDSCAPE, c.1925) and depicted using
integrated areas of pure color and strong brushstrokes.
Muter lived out the years of World War II in Avignon and continued
to create upon returning to Paris. She reverted to her favored motifs
and styles, but painted less intensively, impeded by problems with her
eyesight. Her output is rich and was assessed as she created it by such
authoritative critics as Mieczyslaw Sterling and André Salmon. It was
first summarized in an exhibition of one hundred twenty works held in
Paris in 1953.
She was somewhat forgotten in Poland for decades and remained in the
shadow of other Polish painters linked to the École de Paris. Thus, her
oeuvre remains largely unexplored. Any comprehensive analysis is made
more difficult by the fact that Muter did not always date her paintings
and at times repainted them. The situation has changed somewhat in
recent years. Large, significant selections of her work have been shown
in Poland during exhibitions of the collections of Ewa and Wojciech
Fibak, Tom Podel, and during an exhibition titled PARYZ I ARTYSCI POLSCY
1900-1918. W KREGU E.-A. BOURDELLE'A / PARIS AND POLISH ARTISTS
1900-1918 - E.-A. BOURDELLE AND COMPANY. The most important
presentation, however, was a solo exhibition at Warsaw's National Museum
(KOLEKCJA BOLESLAWA I LINY NAWROCKICH / THE COLLECTION OF BOLESLAW AND
LINA NAWROCKI, 1994-95). The catalogue which accompanied that exhibition
is a valuable source of information about the painter and her oeuvre.
Malgorzata Kitowska-Lysiak
Art History Institute of the Catholic University of Lublin
Faculty of Art Theory and the History of Artistic Doctrines
December 2001
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