Art

Item Description

The Judgement of Solomon (after Nicolas Poussin) by Anna Walinska, 1965.

Oil on paper (framed) 20 x 24, framed 27-1/2 x 32-1/2 (simple off-white linen matte, oak frame)

Anna Walinska (1906-1997) was a Modernist painter and gallerist, whose work often explored Jewish subjects. 

Born in London to labor leader Ossip Walinsky and sculptor-poet-activist Rosa Newman Walinska, her family soon moved to New York, where she enrolled at the Art Students League in 1918 at the age of 12.  In 1926, Walinska went to Paris to study with Andrew Lhote and exhibited at the Salon des Independents.

Back in New York, in 1935 Walinska became an exhibit curator for the Federal Arts Project and founded the Guild Art Gallery, where she gave Arshile Gorky his first New York solo show. 

Walinska received a mid-career retrospective at The Jewish Museum in 1957, and was included in exhibitions throughout the 1950’s at MOMA, the Met, the Baltimore Museum of Art and other leading institutions.  In 1979, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine presented a major retrospective of Walinska’s work, titled simply HOLOCAUST.

Most recently, a painting that was shown in 1959 at the BMA, alongside Ellsworth Kelly, Fernando Botero and Wilfredo Lam, was acquired by the Denver Museum of Art, where it is currently on exhibit.  Her work is included in many other notable collections, including the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, and Yad Vashem.

Walinska’s journals of her trip around the world in 1954-1955 (including a four-month stay in Burma) are included in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, along with her scrapbooks of the Guild Art Gallery.

The Judgment of Solomon, after Nicholas Poussin, 1965, oil on paper, is one of a series based on Renaissance and Baroque era works on biblical themes, viewed through Picasso’s teaching that images can be distilled to their simple, linear essence.

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