Henryk Epstein (1891 Lodz - 1944 Auschwitz), Autumn Landscape, ca. 1938.

oil, canvas, 50 × 65 cm
Signed l. d.: "H. Epstein"

"His first works painted after arriving in Paris were greenish, tart, sharp, but even then strangely appealing, peculiar, in an unusual and barbaric way. Figures, landscapes and still lifes - everything first irritated and then fascinated. Gradually, but inevitably!" Gustave Coquiot, Les indépendants - 1884-1920, Ollendorf 1920. "The individual paintings resemble separate organisms living an intense life. Planes vibrating and trembling. Colors whose task is not to create colorful arabesques, but to bring to life the matter depicted on a two-dimensional canvas, and therefore to apply visual fiction. The cardinal virtue of the artist in question is the ability to create the illusion that the depicted figures are alive and working. Which is not to say that Henry Epstein aims at figurative art. The artist does not aim to convey or communicate his feelings, his visual experience. His goal is different. The painter seeks to bring to life figures whose shapes and outward appearance resemble ordinary people, equipping them with a new soul, a product of his imagination, his property" W. George, The School of Paris, [in:] C. Roth, Jewish Art: An Illustrated