Rajmund Kanelba (1897 Warsaw - 1960 London), Girl in a Green Hat

oil, canvas pasted on board, 49.6 × 40 cm
Signed p. d.: "Kanelba"

Exhibited:
- "Szymon Mondzain and the École de Paris. Polish avant-garde painting of the second half of the 20th century. Collection of Ursula and Piotr Hofman", 22.02.2015-22.04.2015, Abbotsford Palace - Department of Modern Art of the National Museum in Gdańsk

Reproduced:
- "Collection of Ursula and Piotr Hofman," Warsaw 2013, p. 32.
- "Collection of Ursula and Piotr Hofman", Warsaw 2018, p. 30


"[...] 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 deviated from this principle for a moment. He defends two essential elements of his art: his way of perceiving 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 a mass of air, formless and dense, he distinguishes 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.