Grigory Gluckmann (1898-1973)

Grigory Gluckmann's oeuvre is characterized by paintings of young women and ballerinas, executed in a loose painterly style, that is suggestive of the evanescence of youth and beauty. Prior to his arrival in the United States in 1941, Gluckmann, who was born in Tsarist Russia, had already achieved significant success in the roughly two decades he spent in Paris. In the United States, Gluckmann continued to focus primarily on the human form in his work.

In her introduction to the catalogue for the 1972 Gluckmann exhibition at the Palm Springs Desert Museum, in which the present work was shown, Ruth Dalzell Hatfield describes Gluckmann's keen observation and the ability of his eyes to: 'detect multitudinous shades, tones and nuances in any color under changing light, which the normal person passes over as 'just color.' Not only that, but he commands the knowledge of aesthetic principles that enables him to engage these colors, tones and nuances in an intermingling array on canvas that produces evocative poetic overtones beyond the reality of the figure itself.'