Władysław Skoczylas (1883 - 1934), "Dance of the Devils."

woodcut, paper, 15x12 cm

Polish painter, printmaker, sculptor and educator; considered the founder of the Polish school of woodcut.
He graduated from a junior high school in Bochnia. He studied painting at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts under Teodor Axentowicz and Leon Wyczółkowski, and sculpture in the atelier of Konstanty Laszczka. From 1910 to 1913 he studied sculpture in Paris (with Antoine Bourdelle) and printmaking and woodcut at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig (1913). In 1908 he took a position as a teacher of drawing at the Zakopane School of Wood Industry. In 1922 he took over the chair of printmaking at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts, and was its director from 1929 to 1930.