Zygmunt Menkes

Zygmunt (Sigmund) Menkes (May 6, 1896 – August 20, 1986) was a Polish-Jewish modern painter and a member of the School of Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. Menkes emigrated to the United States in 1935 where he remained active until his death in 1986. His later work has been associated with colorist painting and expressionism. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow, graduating in 1922, before moving to Berlin and then Paris in 1923. He became a member of Ecole de Paris, an artistic community of avant-garde artists from around Europe, primarily from Central and Eastern Europe, working together in Paris in a variety of figurative styles. In the U.S., he was awarded the Carol H. Beck Medal of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1943, the Gold Medal of the Corcoran Gallery in 1947, the Andrew Carnegie Award of the National Academy of Design in 1955, and the Alfred Jurzykowski Award in 1967. He died at the age of 91 on August 20, 1986 in New York of a heart attack. His works are in permanent collections located in many locations including, but not limited to: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Jewish Museum in New York, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.