Dimensions: 130 x 162 cm
Signed: signed l.d.: Mondzain / Paris 1924., inscribed on the reverse: Mondzain / 5 Rue Campagne - Première / "La Bataille" / Paris 1924., inscribed on the stretcher: Mondzain S. r. Campagne - Premiere Paris (XIV e), on the reverse an exhibition sticker from the Salon des Tuileries from 1924 with a description of the work
Provenance
Warsaw, private collection London, Bonhams, auction 10.11.2021, item 64.
Exhibited
Paris, Palais de bois a la porte Maillot, Salon des Tuileries, 1924.
Literature
Salon des Tuileries au Palais de bois a la porte Maillot [exhibition catalog], ed. by F. Michel, Paris 1924, cat. no. 1115-1116, p. 61.
The Battle undoubtedly belongs to the group of paintings by Simon Mondzain that established his high position in the Parisian art world. The impressively sized canvas with equally monumental subject matter is one of two works the artist showed in 1924 at the Salon des Tuileries in Paris, a prestigious exhibition illustrating the latest trends in painting. Mondzain moved to Paris in 1912, where he came into contact with the Cubists and Fauvists. He spent a great deal of time in the Louvre studying the works of the old masters. In his painting he used symbolic and allegorical motifs to express existential and religious issues. Like many other artists of Jewish descent, Modzain was fascinated by Christianity and alluded to it in the most varied ways in his paintings, whose aesthetics and compositional structure were modeled on the works of Renaissance masters. The battle is a multi-figural allegorical scene depicting a fight between two men and the kidnapping of a woman. The naked bodies of the composition's protagonists, framed in dynamic movement, are treated like an anatomical study of Renaissance models. Mondzain rendered the taut musculature and twisting of the bodies with great precision. The artist's characteristic technique, evident in the painting in question, was the use of soft contouring and valance modeling to emphasize the figure. Along with numerous still lifes, landscapes and portraits, Simon Mondzain's works from the 1920s, such as Battle (1924), Awakening of Youth (Toilet of a Bride) and Sacrifice (Unknown Guest, 1925-26) belong to a narrow group of paintings with a deepened layer of meaning and elaborate form. In view of the above, the offered work can certainly be classified as a work of exceptional collector value.
