Rajmund Moise Kanelba (Kanelbaum)
1897 - 1960

Rajmund Kanelba was a student of Stanisław Lentz and Tadeusz Pruszkowski at the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1918 to 1919. He continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1919 to 1922. After a two-year stay in Warsaw, he and his wife, Maria Wohl who was also an artist, left for Paris in late 1925 or early 1926. While in Paris he became acquainted with Polish artists Roman Kramsztyk, Mojżesz Kisling, Alfred Aberdam, Zygmunt Menkes, Leopold Gottlieb as well as Max Band, Mane-Katz, Pinchus Kremegne, Michel Kikoine, Vladimir Naiditch and Jacques Lipchitz. Traveling to Brittany in 1927, he stopped in Pont-Aven. In 1928, the renowned art merchants, Marcel Bernheim and Leopold Zborowski, saw Kanelba's work and were so impressed they arranged one-man shows of his paintings in their galleries. The introduction to the catalogue of the exhibition at Zborowski's gallery was written by André Salmon, the future author of Kanelba's monograph published by Editions "Le Triangle".

In the late 1920s, Kanelba became a member of the Polish Artists Group in Paris, and in 1932, joined the coterie of painters founded in Lvov "Nowa Generacja" (The New Generation). A year later he made a final trip to Warsaw from the British Isles where he had made his home. While living in Britain, he made trips to Scotland and Wales where he became a sought-after portraitist. He received numerous commissions for official portraits, including a most spectacular one completed in 1954 of Queen Elizabeth II wearing a colonel-in-chief uniform. Kanelba also painted noted portraits of Duke Edward Raczyński and Zygmunt Menkes's wife, Stanisława.

In 1951 the artist came to the United States, making a home in New York as well as establishing a studio in Westport, Connecticut. He continued to make frequent trips to England and France where he produced a number of commissioned portraits. It was during one of his many visits to London that Kanelba passed away.

Absorbing several achievements of notable post-impressionists, Kanelba co-created a distinguished trend in moderate expressionism at the School of Paris. This tendency was also found in the art of Zygmunt Schreter and Alfred Aberdam. Kanelba was widely acknowledged as a talented portraitist, however, in the early stages of his artistic activity, he painted still lifes (often of flowers), figural compositions, interiors and landscapes. Though he used a quiet palette, it was rich in terms of tints that were predominately in the colors of light blue, green and pink. His artistic technique was often enriched by an expressionistic approach to his canvases. "His oil glitters like enamel; color is always sophisticated in an interesting way, usually dominated by a singular hue" (see Husarski 1932, p. 739). Kanelba's paintings are light and full of harmony, with dramatic tensions of contrasting hues softened by lines of gentle curves. He had a tendency to idealize his portraits of women while the children he painted are visualized synthetically, likened to the little heroes from fairy tales, as in Tadeusz Makowski's paintings. His economy of color and brushwork conveys gentleness and at the same time: strength.

One-man shows of his work were arranged in Paris (1928, 1932, 1933); Berlin (1931); Warsaw (1933); London (1936, 1938) and New York (1937); and during World War II in Scotland. After the war his work was often shown in the United States where posthumous exhibitions of his paintings were displayed in Detroit (1960) and in New York (1961). Along with debuts at the Salons in Paris in 1925, his works were also exhibited in collective shows with those artists of the Warsaw Arts Society, "Nowa Generacja" group, and "Rytm" Associaton (1932). The painter contributed as well to the Institute of Art Propagation in Warsaw and General Nationwide Exhibition in Poznań in 1929. His works were also displayed with other Polish artists at exhibitions in Brussels (1928) and Paris (1929, 1935).

-- Artur Tanikowski

Works in the collection: