Lutka Pink, Composition 1, 1955
Oil on canvas, 47 x 61 cm,
Signed in lower left corner ("PINK").
Lutka Pink (Italian: Szajndla Łaja Pinkusiewicz) was born in 1906 in Warsaw, graduated from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. In 1933 she settled in Paris with her fiancé, later husband, Kazimierz Zielenkiewicz, also a painter, thanks to a scholarship he obtained. During the war, Pink lost her remaining family in Poland, while she herself was in hiding in Auvergne and then Aix-en-Provence. After the war, Pink returned to Paris, but was less connected to the émigré community, and especially to French and international art circles. Among her closer and further acquaintances and friends, we can find such figures as Picasso, Braque, Chagall, Ernst and Restany. In her art, Pink evolved from figurative paintings, evidently inspired by the work of the great masters of the 20th century, such as Cézanne, Matisse and the post-impressionists - above all the Nabiists, whom, by the way, she knew personally, as she had met both Bonnard and Vuillard before the war, the latter of whom helped her obtain a scholarship from the French government - towards abstraction. Starting in the '60s, Pink shuttled between Paris and New York, which is also perfectly evident in her works, where from the '60s onward one can find not only the influence of European abstraction, but also American abstraction, such as de Koonig. Toward the end of her life, Pink, so to speak, came full circle, returning to figuration. Pink's work fits perfectly into the international artistic currents of the post-war period, and its characteristic feature remains - regardless of whether it is an abstract or figurative work - great liveliness, expression, dominance of color, which, however, is not aggressive, but full of energy, perfectly corresponding to the personification of Pink herself, who invoked "the joy of life, nothing but the joy of life" as her main inspiration. Lutka Pink died in New York in 1998. She had already been a well-known and recognized artist since the late 1940s, exhibiting her works in numerous solo exhibitions around the world, participating in group exhibitions, including such well-known ones as the Paris Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, and her works are in prestigious collections around the world.
