"Female Nude"

Wonderful mixed media artwork of a female nude with arms in motion by Samuel Granovsky. Signed and dated 1925, Paris in india ink lower right. The figure is outlined in india ink and the rest of the artwork’s medium is watercolor. Condition is good. Presently unframed but newly professionally matted. Overall matted size is 22 by 27 inches.

Samuel (Chaim) Granovsky was born in 1889 Yekaterinoslav (today Dnipro, Ukraine), in what was then the Russian Empire. He left his home town in order to study painting at the Art Academy in Odessa. He did not return to Odessa after his military service, but instead continued his studies in Munich in 1908/09. He went to Paris in 1910 and settled in Montparnasse, where he worked as a model at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In order to make a living, he also worked as a cleaner at Café La Rotonde. Granovsky regularly exhibited in the Salon des Indépendants, and from 1912 onwards in the Salon d’Automne.

In the early 1920s he also joined the Cherez Group, which was closely linked to the Dadaists. During the Second World War, he remained in Paris, but was arrested in July 1942 during the “Rafle du Vélodrome d’Hiver”, a series of mass arrests of Jews. He was initially interned in Drancy but was then deported to Auschwitz on 22 July, where he was killed in 1942.