Portrait of a man in a blue waistcoat.

Oil on canvas signed upper left.

Dimensions: 81 x 65 cm, with frame: 89 x 73 cm.

Joachim Weingart gives us here a portrait imbued with melancholy, very expressive.

This portrait of a young man on a red background calls out for his spontaneity of execution. 

Dressed in a blue waistcoat, white shirt, red collar and black tie, he stands with his hands crossed in a relaxed, almost casual posture. The red color, symbol of passion, very present in this portrait contrasts with the calm and gentleness of the character, gazing into the vagueness. 

A member of the Paris school, Weingart was a companion of Chaïm Soutine, and this is felt in his approach to deform human beings in order to better recreate them. The result is an abstract canvas that blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, between body and mind. 

Joachim Weingart's father, a wine merchant, dies prematurely, leaving his wife alone with her two children.

Joachim Weingart left his hometown in 1912 to take drawing lessons in Weimar. He exhibited for the first time in Lviv in 1912, at the School of Arts and Crafts then in Vienna in 1914, where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts. Industrialist and patron, Carol Kratz discovers Weingart's talent and decides to support him. Alfred Aberdam and David Seifert will also benefit from the support of the patron.

In 1916, Weingart made his first visit to Berlin. After the First World War, he moved to Galicia and exhibited in Lodz. Again in Berlin in 1922, he met Menkés and Alfred Aberdam there in the studio of sculptor Alexander Archipenko. 

In September 1923, a personal exhibition was organized at the headquarters of the Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Lvov.

In 1923, according to a letter from Menkès, he joined him in Paris and shared his room for two years at the hotel. he binds with Leon Weissberg and Aberdam already met in Berlin. In 1925, they will meet together to exhibit in Jan Sliwinski's gallery “The Rite of Spring” at 5 rue du Recherches-Midi. The Galician friends will form the “Group of Four”.

In 1925, Weingart moved to a workshop in Montparnasse. He falls in love with a young French girl, the daughter of a doctor, whom he marries despite the opposition of the parents. The dealer René Gimpel is interested in his painting and Weingart then experiences a period of success before sinking into a depression after the departure of his wife and son.

In 1930 Gimpel signed him a contract. In November 1934, Weingart began the charcoal drawings for the portrait of Mrs. Gimpel. His state of health worsens. Lonely and tragic, he stands aside. He paints relentlessly in his studio. It was there that he was arrested on March 30, 1942 and then interned in the Pithiviers camp