Wladyslaw Jahl (1886-1953), Valley of the Wolves, 1933
Oil on canvas, 81.5 x 116 cm (frame) / 63 x 98 cm (framed).
Unsigned, title and date on the back.
Small losses to the frame.
The painting comes from the artist's atelier.
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Wladyslaw Jahl - painter, graphic artist, stage designer. Born in Yaroslavl in 1886, he studied law at Lviv University and art history at Jagiellonian University. In 1912 he went to Paris, where in the following years he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. After the outbreak of World War I, he left for Spain, where he met, among others, Jozef Pankiewicz, under whose tutelage he studied from 1917. 1920 he returned to Paris, where he became closely associated with the Ecole de Paris, including Polish artists who were part of it, especially Moise Kisling and Mela Muter. He participated in the Autumn Salons and the Salons of Independent Artists. In 1936 (or 1935, depending on sources), he co-founded the Group of Polish Artists in France, a reincarnation of the 1922 Union of Polish Artists in France, created by Jozef Pankiewicz and Waclaw Zawadowski. He was often in Spain, the influence of which can be seen in his paintings. He designed theater decorations and costumes, including for the Odeon theater in Madrid. During World War II, he stayed in the Grenoble area, and many of his works, left in his Paris studio, were lost. After the war, he used the studio of Mela Muter. He died in Paris, 1953.