Dimensions: 48 x 26 x 33 cm
Origin
Auction at the Xawery Dunikowski Museum of Sculpture in Królikarnia, Found sculptures - auction of works by Jan Cykowski, July 2015.
private collection, Poland
Exhibited
Museum of Sculpture Xawery Dunikowski in Królikarnia, Found sculptures - auction of Jan Cykowski's works, July 2015
Biography
He began his artistic education at the State School of Wood Industry in Zakopane. After the war, he studied sculpture at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, where he received his diploma in 1953. In the 1950s he created sculpture maintained in the spirit of socialist realism, but after the Gomulka thaw he remained faithful to the realist style. The most important motif of his work was the human figure. He took up the theme of labor (Prządka), the struggle for Poland's liberation (figures of soldiers with weapons), and was interested in portraiture, the male and female nude. He expressed himself in both intimate sculpture and monumental sculpture. He designed monuments to people of cultural merit (including Fryderyk Chopin, Stanislaw Moniuszko and Nicolaus Copernicus), most of which did not live to see realization. He depicted figures in the traditional manner - standing or sitting on a high pedestal. He is best known for his statue of Stanislaw Moniuszko in Raciborz (bronze casting) unveiled in 1961. Since the 1950s, he cooperated with the Pracownie Sztuk Plastycznych in Warsaw, which, under state patronage, brought together experienced and outstanding artists of various disciplines around tasks related to the postwar reconstruction of the country. Sculptures adorning postwar architecture, including the Palace of Culture and Science, as well as monuments, were designed and realized here. In the Warsaw sculpture atelier of the Pracownia Sztuk Plastycznych, artists such as Alfons Karny and Jan Szczepkowski worked together with Jan Cykowski. In the 1960s, Jan Cykowski was one of the members of the committee - along with Prof. Stanislaw Lorenz (director of the National Museum), Jerzy Grabowski (chairman of the Social Fund for Reconstruction of the Capital), Marshal Marian Spychalski (associated with the Social Fund for Reconstruction of the Capital) and Marek Kwiatkowski (curator of the Royal Baths), among others - that supervised the reconstruction of the Królikarnia Palace for the headquarters of the Xawery Dunikowski Museum.
