Leopold Levitsky (1906 Burdiakowce near Ternopil - 1973 Lviv), "Funeral of a Worker," 1932

oil/plywood
Dimensions: 51.5 x 70.5 cm
On the reverse: oil study of Wawel Cathedral and a paper deposit sticker of the National Museum in Poznan

Provenance
collection of Bogdan Kędziorek, Cracow (purchased directly from the artist)
private collection, Poland (long-term deposit at National Museum in Poznan)

Exhibited
Hommage à Józef Chrobak - around the memory of the Cracow Group, 9/11 Art Space Foundation, Piekary Gallery, Poznań, November 20 - December 23, 2020
Here comes the youth! I Grupa Krakowska, National Museum in Krakow, September 27, 2019 - January 5, 2020
Krakow Group 1932-1937, National Museum in Wroclaw, December 2, 2018 - March 31, 2019
Cracks of Freedom - Polish Art 1945-1948/49, National Museum in Poznań, August 6 - November 12, 2017
Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, 1932

Literature
Hommage à Józef Chrobak - around the memory of the Cracow Group, exhibition catalog, ed. Magdalena Piłakowska, 9/11 Art Space Foundation, Piekary Gallery, Poznań 2020, cat. no. 20, il. 6
Grupa Krakowska 1932-1937, exhibition catalog, ed. by Barbara Ilkosz, National Museum in Wroclaw, Wroclaw 2018, p. 88 (il.), p. 321 (list of works exhibited in the exhibition)
Cracks of Freedom - Polish Art in 1945-1948/49, exhibition catalog, ed. by Włodzimierz Nowaczyk, National Museum in Poznań, Poznań 2017, pp. 6-7, 243, 292 (il.), cat. no. 180
Maria Kosińska, Genesis of the "Cracow Group" - in light of facts and documents, "Przegląd Artystyczny" 1960, no. 1, p. 43 (mentioned)
Politics at the seat of art and political police, "Forward" 1932, p.2, no.140 (mentioned)

Biography
Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow in 1925-32, and the majority of his output in the field of printmaking in metal techniques comes from these years (later he practiced linocut and woodcut). He was a member of the first "Cracow Group" (1933-1937), sympathetic to the communists. He was repressed by the police for these associations and participation in demonstrations. Together with other members of the group (including Maria Jarema, Stanislaw Osostowicz, Jonasz Stern), he co-founded the last generation of the Polish avant-garde before World War II. In addition to social issues, the group's explorations were directed towards a peculiar kind of brutal realism, its members independently arrived at abstraction based on expressionism. Levitsky spent the years of World War II in Chortkiv (1939-41) and in the Samarkand region, where he worked as a teacher and served in a construction battalion (1941-44). From 1944 he lived permanently in Lviv. He was active in the Artists' Union there. In 1970 he was awarded the title of Distinguished Artist of the Ukrainian SSR. After the war, he created in the convention of socialist realism in force in the USSR. He practiced easel and decorative painting, sculpture, printmaking and applied graphics (book graphics).