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Untitled (Horns and Bow), 1941, oil on board, signed and dated lower right, 15 x 20 1/2 inches, presented in its original frame
SOLD
Eva Schwartz was a multi-faceted modernist painter. Born in Varsovia, Poland, on October 19, 1904, into a Jewish family, Schwartz initially trained in Warsaw before moving to Berlin where she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts with the sculptor Georg Kolbe. After her German sojourn, Schwartz returned to Poland, opened a gallery, and became a pioneer in introducing Surrealism and Abstraction to the Warsaw art scene. Schwartz became a leading member of a group of young modernists in Warsaw before relocating to Paris. With the outbreak of World War II, she escaped to Vichy France and with the help of her medical student brother, Frederic, Schwartz sailed for Uruguay. She became a citizen of Uruguay and exhibited in various national and municipal salons. After the war, Schwartz returned to Paris where she supported herself by working in “’straight’ portraiture – clean, perceptive, brightly harmonized and simply conceived."
Schwartz’s oeuvre consisted of several phases. In addition to her early modernist work and straight portraiture, Schwartz produced trompe l’oeil designs which were compared to Aaron Bohrod’s 1950s and ‘60s Magic Realist-influenced works. During her time in Montevideo in the early 1940s, Schwartz became well-regarded for “symbolic portraits,” like Untitled (Horns and Bow). A reporter described these works as follows: “She invented a kind of abstract portrait, a composition in which she rendered the character and manner of a subject through color, texture and line alone. A variation of this was the ‘symbolic portrait,’ in which associative objects, such as books, bibelots, vegetables and bits of clothing, all taken together, gave a personality picture of her subject. These clever paintings became quite popular, were widely talked about and Eva was soon in demand as a society painter.” Unfortunately, the subject of Untitled (Horns and Bow) is unknown.
Schwartz’s works entered private collections in Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Montevideo. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales in Montevideo, Uruguay.