Tahiti, French Polynesia
1930
Gouache on paper, gilt wood frame
Image: 12 × 9¾ in. (30.5 × 24.8 cm); framed: 17½ × 12½ in. (44.5 × 31.8 cm)
Provenance: Patrice Bredel, Galerie Api, Moorea, Tahiti
Maxim Kopf (1892–1953) was a Czech-born painter who traveled extensively and worked in a broadly modernist idiom influenced by his exposure to European avant-garde circles. This bust-length portrait of a Tahitian woman is signed and dated 1930, placing it within the interwar period when Tahiti continued to draw European artists in the wake of Gauguin's legacy. The figure is rendered frontally against a blue-green ground, her expression direct and unidealized.
Kopf's handling of gouache here moves between thinly applied washes in the background and more opaque, built-up passages across the face and shoulders, creating a sense of volume without academic finish. The warm ochre and sienna tones of the skin are set in contrast with the cool blue field behind, a color relationship characteristic of his portraiture. The work comes from Galerie Api on Moorea, one of the longstanding commercial venues for Pacific art in French Polynesia.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
Tahiti, French Polynesia
1930
Gouache on paper, gilt wood frame
Image: 12 × 9¾ in. (30.5 × 24.8 cm); framed: 17½ × 12½ in. (44.5 × 31.8 cm)
Provenance: Patrice Bredel, Galerie Api, Moorea, Tahiti
Maxim Kopf (1892–1953) was a Czech-born painter who traveled extensively and worked in a broadly modernist idiom influenced by his exposure to European avant-garde circles. This bust-length portrait of a Tahitian woman is signed and dated 1930, placing it within the interwar period when Tahiti continued to draw European artists in the wake of Gauguin's legacy. The figure is rendered frontally against a blue-green ground, her expression direct and unidealized.
Kopf's handling of gouache here moves between thinly applied washes in the background and more opaque, built-up passages across the face and shoulders, creating a sense of volume without academic finish. The warm ochre and sienna tones of the skin are set in contrast with the cool blue field behind, a color relationship characteristic of his portraiture. The work comes from Galerie Api on Moorea, one of the longstanding commercial venues for Pacific art in French Polynesia.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
