"lippyz" (israel Isaac) Lipshitz (1903-1980) Portrait Of A Man In A Beret, Circa 1930

"Lippyz" (Israel Isaac) Lipshitz (1903-1980)
Portrait of a man in a beret, circa 1930
Oil on canvas
46 x 38 cm
Signed in the composition lower right
Inscription on the back on the stretcher: Lippy Lipshitz (1903-1980) / (Israel, Isaac)

Born in Lithuania in 1903, Israel-Isaac Lipshitz emigrated to Cape Town in 1908. Trained at the Cape Town School of Art and then at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris under Antoine Bourdelle - Rodin's former assistant - he returned to South Africa, where he became one of the central figures of South African modernism. Co-founder of the New Group, professor at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, he took part in the Venice Biennale in 1950. His work is held at the Tate (London), the Ben Uri Collection and numerous South African institutions. A catalog raisonné of his work has been compiled by Arnott & Miros (A.A. Balkema, Cape Town, 1969).

This portrait of a man with a beret bent over a book, treated in an earthy palette animated by warm reds and deep browns, bears witness to the social figurative current developed by Lipshitz in the 1930s-1940s, at the crossroads of Cézanne influence and post-Paris Expressionism.