Zygmunt Menkes (1896 Lvov - 1986 Riverdale), Portrait of a Jew, before 1939.

gouache, cardboard, 60 × 44.5 cm
Signed p. d.: Menkes

"I have always believed that only the harmony between the abstract values of plastic language and the inner and direct contact with life and nature (as well as a personal relationship to life) can only lead an artist to create a work of art. Without this harmony, only a laboratory experiment or a sentimental illustration is the result. This has always been true, and is even more obvious in our time. Exactly this translation of life and nature into the language of art, which he considers most essential, determines the artist's personal style. The purity and directness of this language is the yardstick by which only a work of art can be judged."
Sigmund Menkes, quoted in Sigmund Menkes 1896-1986, Lipert Gallery, New York 1993, p. 19.