Benn Portrait Of A Woman

Portrait of a woman in bust painted in oil on cardboard by Benn. Benn, pseudonym of Bencjon Rabinowicz, was born in Poland in Bialystok on April 19, 1905. He showed a talent for drawing very early on, giving lessons from the age of 12. His first training with a painter led him to make theater sets and to enter the Union of Professional Artists in Poland. A scholarship from his hometown in the 1930s allowed him to go to Paris where he attended classes with Fernand Léger. In France, he met his future wife, Ghéra, a dancer and musician, whom he married in 1938, and acquired French nationality. Mobilized at the beginning of the war, then interned in the Beaune la Rolande camp, with his wife as Jews, they were freed and went underground. He practiced sculpture. After the Liberation, he settled permanently in Paris until his death in 1989, exhibiting regularly in French and international museums. Our painting is framed in a modern frame and signed at the bottom. It has a slight scratch in the varnish. A certain resemblance is to be noted between the model of our painting and the photographs representing Ghéra. The inscription on the back in red chalk from 1948 should correspond to the date of the work.