1927 Modernist Still Life Gesso Painting on Canvas by Myron Lechay, Framed

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Subject displays a clock, daffodil flowers, and vase in still life tablescape. In original gilt gold-leaf wood frame. Signed lower … Read more Subject displays a clock, daffodil flowers, and vase in still life tablescape. In original gilt gold-leaf wood frame. Signed lower right and dated lower left. Colors include orange, brown, yellow, green, purple.

Myron Lechay (1898-1972). Born in Kiev, Ukraine (formerly Soviet Union Russia), Lechay immigrated to New York in 1906. In the 1920s he became a notable player in the city’s avant garde art scene and joined the Société Anonyme, where he was exposed to Modern American and European progressive art. Throughout his career Lechay became known and befriended by renowned artists of the time, such as Stuart Davis. Their works were often shown together considering their stylistic comparisons. Lechay's works were also featured in the Valentine Gallery, Carnegie Institute, Brooklyn Museum, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Working in the vein of Abstract Colorism, Lechay’s show at the Valentine Gallery had prompted the names of French heavy hitters such as Matisse. However his works’ style and palette more clearly echoed an artist closer to home: Milton Avery. Lechay’s paintings are prosaic and commonplace to most. His canvases capture landscapes, docks, household objects, and unremarkable individuals, as he rendered them in such a way that shows little interest in the subject’s superficial value, but rather in the beauty of its form. He pared his subjects down to flat blocks of colors, creating simple arrangements that reveal poetry in the everyday. See less