Rajmund Kanelba (1897 Warsaw - 1960 London), Girl with Flowers

oil, canvas, 76.5 × 64 cm
signed p. g.: "kanelba"
On the reverse, inscribed: GIRL WITH FLOWERS/BY/KANELBA/(799 PARK AV. N.Y.C)

"[...] Kanelba belongs to the "young" of this special category [of painters reaching creative maturity in Paris] - he came from Poland with the clear intention of defending his creative independence and has not for a moment deviated from this principle. He defends two essential elements of his art: his perception of Reality and his style. This is not an easy task, especially in Paris, where the penchant for static harmony, inherent in the Latin spirit and reflected in the precise line of drawing, does not harmonize with the dynamism, in a Romantic sense, of the perpetually jittery contour that underlies all of Kanelba's work. Breaking through the mass of air, unformed and dense, he distinguishes the three colorful dimensions of Reality. One must do him justice - he defends this vision of Reality, with a fluid "epidermis" but a solid skeleton, making convincing arguments that he owes to the beautiful colors of his palette. No, this in no way resembles the concept of the Impressionists - Kanelba is not interested in the external appearance of the forms depicted, their plastic values. He composes his paintings in a completely different way: he pays attention to color and light, to the inner "sense of form, which is created by the mass of air that emphasizes its plasticity."
Z. St. Klingsland, La peinture de Kanelba, "Pologne Litteraire" 1932, no. 65-66, p. 4.