Franciszek Starowieyski, Sketches for the Image of DIVINA POLONIA, 1998

28.3 x 40.3 cm - pastel, paper 28.3 x 40.3 cm (in light of passe-partout)

Signed l.d.: 16 FS 98 [date separated by bound monogram], below p.: W [in brown circle].
On the reverse p.d. print sticker. from the exhibition: Franciszek | Starowieyski | Divina Polonia | Krakow, June-July 1998 | ARTEMIS | art gallery [in a box] | [address and tel. of gallery], below sticker with the name of the gallery itself.

Sketches - used and not used in the final work - for the monumental (4 x 3.5 m) painting "Divina Polonia" of 1998. The work was commissioned from Franciszek Starowieyski by Bronislaw Geremek, then Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland. It hung in the hall of the Polish Mission to the European Union (later Permanent Representation) in Brussels. The original title of the painting was Divina Polonia rapta per Europa Profana" (Holy Poland Kidnapped by Secular Europe - in the artist's translation; other versions of the polonized title are known, but this one seems the most accurate). As a result of the controversy the painting stirred up among EU officials, the title was shortened to the first two words, with the rest obliterated. The scene alludes to the myth of Europe being kidnapped by Zeus (here in the form of a steely bull, which Europe rides with equally "mechanical" wings). Poland is symbolized by a female figure with a halo on the right. She gives the impression of being reluctant to be kidnapped, or at least skeptical.

♣ A fee will be added to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, based on the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Law of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite)

Franciszek Starowieyski (Bratkówka near Krosno 8 July 1930 - Warsaw 23 II 2009), using the pseudonym Jan Byk, studied from 1949 to 1952 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under Prof. Wojciech Weiss , after which he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, receiving his diploma in the studio of Prof. Michał Bylina in 1955. In the 1960s and 1970s, he gained the greatest recognition as a poster designer, in which he quickly rivaled the coryphaeuses of this art in Poland. He cultivated a poster of the author's type, with a recognizable style based on sweeping and at the same time calligraphic drawing, and above all surprising, surreal associations. Since 1964 he was the art director of the fashionable monthly magazine "You and I". With time, the predominance in his achievements gained "pure" drawing, since 1980 often presented in the form of dynamic sessions of the so-called "Theater of Drawing", with the participation of models, audience and the artist himself, fulfilling in it the role of demiurge. He created many painting and drawing compositions emanating a surreal atmosphere of life on the verge of physical decay, being a contemporary version of the vanitas theme. Fascinated by Baroque culture, the artist has been anti-dating all his works by 300 years since 1970. The artist was the recipient of numerous awards, which he won at such exhibitions as the Sao Paulo Art Biennale 1973, the International Film Poster Exhibition, Cannes 1974, the "Annual Key Award", Los Angeles 1978, among others. He was in New York many times at the invitation of the Kosciuszko Foundation. In 1980 he was a professor at the Berliner Hochschule der Künste, in the 1990s he taught at the European Academy of Arts in Warsaw.