Zbigniew Pronaszko (1885 Derebczyn - 1958 Krakow), Landscape overlooking the Kosciuszko Mound

watercolor/paper
Size: 34.5 x 46.5 cm (in light frame)
signed and inscribed on the front: 'To Dear Leon Wyrwicz | ZPronaszko'.
on the reverse a fragment of a newspaper article about Zbigniew Pronaszko

Origins
gift of the artist to actor and monologist Leon Wyrwicz (1885-1951), Kraków
collection of Leon Wyrwicz's heirs, Kraków

Biography
Brother of Andrzej, also a painter. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Kiev and in 1906-11 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under Teodor Axentowicz and Jacek Malczewski. In 1910 he traveled to Italy and France. He was a member of art groups: Formists and Zwornik. He lived in Zakopane, Vilnius, where he was a professor of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Stefan Batory University, and in Cracow, where he was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. His work in both painting and sculpture (including the Mickiewicz monument for Vilnius) was shaped by the influence of avant-garde European art, especially Cubism, and the art of the Podhale region. In the 1930s, his interest in color became dominant in his painting - in an effort to synthesize it, he extracted a great wealth of hues from just a few primary colors. He painted primarily landscapes, still lifes and portraits.