Isis Kischka (1908 – 1973) “sailboats In Sandrancourt, Yvelines” Oil On Canvas Signed, 41x33

Isis KISCHKA (Paris 1908 – Montmorency 1973) “Sailboats in Sandrancourt, Yvelines” Oil on canvas signed at the bottom, countersigned and titled on the back 41 x 33 cms Isis Kischka spent her childhood in Paris, where her parents settled two years before her birth. His father, of Polish origin, was a restaurateur before opening a grocery store in the 15th arrondissement. At the age of nineteen, he became interested in painting and literature. He turned definitively to painting in 1927 and attended the Grande Chaumière academy. His paintings were noticed by Parisian critics, notably Waldemar George. In 1941, Kischka was arrested on the orders of the Gestapo. Transferred to Drancy, he remained there for two years, until the departure of the German army in August 1944. He estimated to have painted two hundred canvases before 1940, destroyed by the Nazis. Returning to Paris in 1945, he faced immediate financial difficulties and took over his father's store. He paints before going to work and carries out his two activities simultaneously. Of Expressionist tendency, he was the founding president of the Salon of Painters Witnesses of their Time, of which he was the general secretary, from 1946 until his death, and he organized annual exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and at the Galliera Museum in the city of Paris, allowing promising artists to be highlighted. In 2001, works from his studio were sold in an auction. The Meudon art and history museum has numerous drawings from the Salon of Painters, witnesses of their time, which belonged to Kischka.