Sonia LEWITSKA (1880-1937) - Still life with apples

Still life with apples
Oil on canvas, signed lower right
24x31cm
Empire style frame
43x51cm
Sonia Lewitska or Sophia Lewitska born March 9, 1880and died September 21, 1937 in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, is a Ukrainian painter and illustrator, at the time subject Russian Empire.
Born into a Ukrainian-Polish family undoubtedly established in Podolie (Ukraine), Sonia Lewitska studied art from 1894 in a private course, that of T. Kazanovsky in Jytomyr, then in the workshop of Sergiy Svetoslavski (1857-1931) in Kiev.
In 1905, she moved to Paris and studied at the École des beaux-arts. There, she befriended some representatives of Fauvism such as Raoul Dufy who introduced her to silk painting but also Jean Marchand with whom she married. She frequented the artistic circles of Montparnasse and the Ecole de Paris. She exhibited regularly from 1910 (Salon d'automne, Salon des indépendants, Section d'Or). His style is characterized by landscapes of great poetry imbued with a certain magic, very linked to the Ukrainian folk arts, style that does not leave indifferent critics like Guillaume Apollinaire. Between 1913 and 1937, she exhibited mainly in Parisian galleries including that of Berthe Weill.
n 1912, his work was presented in Moscow, as part of the exhibition of French painters entitled Modern Art, alongside Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet, Robert Delaunay, among others.
In 1921, alongside the poet Roger Allard, she translated Nicolas Gogol’s novel Les Veillées du château près de Dikanka and Les Nuits d'Ukraine, which she illustrated. She then embarked on wood engraving.
In 1932 and 1933 she exhibited in Lviv. In 1937, she participated in the retrospective "Femmes artistes d'Europe" organized by Laure Albin Guillot at the Musée du Jeu de Paume.
Her talent as an illustrator is exercised through books and some magazines.
Her home is Rue Caulaincourt. Famous Ukrainian artist, she died at the age of 63, in the Pension Belhomme.
In 1938, the Société des amis de Sonia Lewitska organized in her memory two exhibitions in Paris at ?ndré Sambon thanks to the good care of Georges Huisman.