Mojżesz (Moise) Kisling
1891 - 1953

The son of a tailor from the district of Kazimierz in Kraków, Mojżesz Kisling entered the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts in the studio of Józef Pankiewicz in 1907. During his studies he won several awards. Together with his friend Simon Mondzain he was among the first generation of students sent to Paris for further education by Pankiewicz, who was well aware of the city's role in shaping the face of modernity. Upon his arrival in Paris in 1910 or 1911, the painter lived first in Montmartre. In 1913, he moved to Montparnasse where he became a neighbor of, among others, his friend Leopold Gottlieb and the art dealer Leopold Zborowski. The year 1912 marked his first trip to Brittany, where he became acquainted with the art of Władysław Ślewiński and other artists from the Pont-Aven School gathered around Gauguin. In the same year, he stayed at Céret in southern France in the company of Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Manolo Hugue and Pablo Picasso. While there, he also met Adolf Basler, who became his first dealer. In addition, he befriended André Salmon, Guillaume Apollinaire, Tsuguharu Foujita and Chaim Soutine as well as the Poles Tadeusz Makowski, Eugeniusz Zak, Henryk Hayden, Louis Marcoussis, Roman Kramsztyk, Mela Muter and Zygmunt Landau. He participated in exhibitions of Polish art organized by the Society of Polish Artists in Paris, among others, and belonged to the Trade Union of Polish Painters and Sculptors in Paris and the Society of Friends of Tadeusz Makowski. He stayed in contact with the Formists, illustrated Tadeusz Peiper's poems, and maintained a close relationship with his professor, Józef Pankiewicz, taking care of the latter's wife after the death of his mentor.

He was one of Amedeo Modigliani's closest friends. As a personality, he was known to the entire art world of Paris. This "prince of Montparnasse," as he was called, both aroused admiration and caused a sensation when, for instance, he took part in a pistol and sable duel with his friend Leopold Gottlieb in 1914. He was a leader of style and fashion and was successful socially and financially.

In 1914, he went to the Netherlands with Adolf Basler, but returned to France when war was declared to enlist in the so-called Polish Bayonne Division of the Foreign Legion. Earlier, together with Leopold Gottlieb, he had belonged to the Paris division of the paramilitary organization known as the "Strzelec" (Rifleman). Wounded in the battle of Clarency, he spent a period of convalescence in Spain, and then returned to Montparnasse. In the company of Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani and others he took part in a famous show at the gallery "Lyre et Palette" (1916), which ultimately affirmed his artistic fame. He often traveled to Provence, whose landscape proved to be provocative for his art and the climate a sufficient attraction to have his house built there - at Sanary-sur-Mer - where André Salmon was one of his neighbors. From there the artist took trips to Marseille and Saint-Tropez.

In 1922, (and according to some sources, as early as 1915) he was granted French citizenship for his wartime merits and in 1953 he was awarded the Legion of Honor. When World War II broke out he was mobilized into the French army. After the French armistice he went south to Marseille both to attend Pankiewicz's funeral and escape capture by the Gestapo. From there he went to Lisbon and then to the U.S. He settled in New York City at 222 Central Park South, where, as he had done in Paris, he held an open house for interesting people from artistic and intellectual spheres. He maintained friendly relations with other Poles residing across the ocean, including Arthur Rubinstein and Felicja Lilpop-Krance. He was known and esteemed in the U.S.; his works found such important American collectors as Alfred C. Barnes, the founder of The Barnes Foundation at Merion, Pennsylvania.

When the war ended, the painter returned to France, dividing his time between Sanary-sur-Mer and Paris. After his death, the Society of Friends of Kisling was founded, and to commemorate his father's achievement, Kisling's son Jean has issued successive volumes of the artist's Catalogue raisonné over the last thirty years.

Kisling's first paintings created prior to 1912 reflect a particular dialogue with some of the Post-Impressionists’ inventions: visible in them is a preoccupation both with Cézanne's art (possibly under the influence of Pankiewicz) and with Pont-Aven synthetism (following his encounter with Ślewiński). Next, under the impact of his contacts with the Cubists, he started to geometricize forms and space, never losing sight of the object as a whole. That he came much closer to Derain than to Picasso or Braque is substantiated by his comment: "I am trying to introduce into my works a purely human element and that is exactly what makes it impossible for me to espouse Cubism" (Wiadomości Literackie, 1926, no 46). Afterwards his observation of nature was expressed through his sensitivity to the beauty of the female body and in his inherent vitality, which revealed itself in decorative combinations of contrasting, saturated hues. He also wished to carry on a dialogue both with the tradition of the old masters and with relatively contemporary trends, such as Fauvism (in his works of before 1920), Surrealism, and metaphysical painting, and, finally, with his inclination toward a sublime, sophisticated drawing technique.

Beyond any method worked out in a given period, his paintings always possessed Cézannesque discipline combined with a decorative quality; something André Salmon dubbed "organized Naturalism". The games he played with painting conventions in his later canvases were extremely sophisticated but did not always find recognition in the eyes of avant-garde critics. Through his last works Kisling – regarded as one of the leading artists of the School of Paris – managed to preserve excellent pictorial form.

Kisling's debut took place at the Autumn Salon in 1912. From then on he continued to exhibit there and at other Parisian Salons. He organized one-man shows in Paris (1919, 1924, 1927, 1937); Munich (1921, 1927); Marseilles (1940, 1950) and London (1957), and elsewhere. He also exhibited in Pittsburgh (1934) and Los Angeles (1942). His paintings were shown at the First International Exhibition of New Art in Düsseldorf (1922) and at the Whitney Museum in New York (1941). They appeared several times at the Venice Biennale: at an exhibition of the School of Paris together with works by Alicja Halicka, Louis Marcoussis, Józef Menkes and Mela Muter (1928); as a one-man show in the Italian pavilion (1932); and at the jubilee exhibition on the occasion of the Bienniale's fortieth-anniversary (1935). In Poland he exhibited with the Polish Expressionists, later known as the Formists (Kraków 1917), participated in shows of works by Józef Pankiewicz and his pupils in Warsaw (1923) and in Kraków (1924), and took part in group exhibitions of Polish art abroad, including those in Paris (1920, 1922, 1929) and Brussels (1928/1929).

-- Artur Tanikowski

Works in the collection: