Major Mela Muter Retrospective Opens in Poland and Paris

The news in Polish

1. malarka  (f.)
   kobieta, która tworzy obrazy jako zawód lub hobby ↩︎
2. jechać
   przemieszczać się gdzieś pojazdem lub transportem ↩︎
3. malować
   tworzyć obrazy za pomocą farb i pędzla ↩︎
4. obraz  (m.)
   dzieło sztuki namalowane farbami na płótnie lub innej powierzchni ↩︎
5. umrzeć
   przestać żyć, skończyć życie ↩︎
6. muzeum  (n.)
   budynek, w którym przechowuje się i pokazuje dzieła sztuki lub inne ważne przedmioty ↩︎

Translation

Text comprehension

Question 1: In which city was Mela Muter born?

Question 2: In what year did Mela Muter travel to Paris?

Vocabulary

Polish	English
malarka  (f.)	painter
jechać	to go (by vehicle)
malować	to paint
obraz  (m.)	painting
umrzeć	to die
muzeum  (n.)	museum

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A major retrospective dedicated to the Polish painter Mela Muter is set to open at the Villa La Fleur Museum in Konstancin-Jeziorna, near Warsaw, running from 19 September 2026 to 28 February 2027. The exhibition, titled Mela Muter. Współodczuwanie świata (Mela Muter. Feeling the World Together), will present more than 230 works, making it the largest display of her art in recent decades.

After its showing in Poland, the exhibition will travel to the Musée de Montmartre in Paris — a collaboration that reflects Muter’s significance as an artist who helped shape the international art scene of the French capital while maintaining ties to Polish culture.

Muter was born in 1876 in Warsaw as Maria Melania Klingsland, into a wealthy Jewish family. As a young woman she was expected to become a concert pianist, but she was drawn instead to drawing and painting. In 1901, she moved to Paris with her husband and infant son, convinced that Poland offered her little opportunity to develop as an artist. She briefly studied at the Académie Colarossi and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, yet always described herself as self-taught, saying she learnt most by observing people, landscapes, and the work of other painters.

She quickly attracted attention in Paris. A breakthrough came in 1911, when she showed 33 paintings at the Galeria Dalmau in Barcelona — a venue associated with Picasso and Matisse — and critics praised what they called her “untroubled and dazzling power.” By the 1920s she was an established figure in Parisian art circles, a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and lived in a modernist studio-villa on Montparnasse designed by architect Auguste Perret. She was particularly admired as a portraitist; those who sat for her included the composer Maurice Ravel, and writers Anatole France and Henryk Sienkiewicz.

The Second World War interrupted her success. She took refuge in Avignon, where she taught painting, and her Paris home was occupied by the painter Jean Dubuffet, whom she never recovered it from. In 1958, Polish collector Bolesław Nawrocki found her living in a cramped, damp studio in Paris at the age of over 80, and secured a significant portion of her paintings and personal archive. She died in 1967, aged 91.

Despite her achievements, Muter’s name remains far less widely known in Poland than those of contemporaries such as Tamara Łempicka or Olga Boznańska. Artur Winiarski, curator of the exhibition and director of Villa La Fleur, said: “Her paintings do not beautify. But they say everything.” He added that it is “time to restore the artist’s rightful place in the history of European art.” The show will cover all periods of her career, including oil paintings, drawings, prints, and archival materials from public and private collections in Poland and abroad.