Konstanty Sopoćko (1903 Warsaw - 1992 Komorów), Portrait of a Highlander, 1931

woodcut/paper
Size: 19 x 13 cm (clear passe-partout)
Signed and described in pencil at the bottom: 'K.M.Sopoćko 31'

Condition
framed

Biography
Studied at the School of Fine Arts - painting and drawing with Mieczyslaw Kotarbinski, woodcut with Wladyslaw Skoczylas, applied graphics with Edmund Bartlomiejczyk and Bonawentura Lenart, and at the same time art history at the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw University of Technology with Stanislaw Noakowski, where the curriculum provided young architects with the basis for designing posters as well. He received his diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1934. He was a member of the Association of Graphic Artists "Ryt", the Block of Professional Visual Artists and the Circle of Advertising Graphic Artists. During the occupation, he worked at the Warsaw tar paper factory on Podchorążych Street, and belonged to the secret Circle of Graphic Arts and Exlibris Enthusiasts. Konstanty Sopoćko designed dozens of posters. He became famous as the author of expressive propaganda designs. As much as a poster designer, he was involved in lithography (Seven Deadly Sins series, 1927), woodcuts, book graphics, advertising and art prints, and especially loved exlibris, of which he is a leading Polish artist. Sopoćko's works were exhibited in Los Angeles at The International Bookplate Exhibition in 1933, where he received First Prize, and an honorable mention a year later. In 1934 Sopoćko participated in exhibitions in Marseilles and Chicago, in 1936 at the Exhibition of Polish Art in Helsinki and London. In 1937 Sopoćko's posters were among the exhibits shown at the International Exhibition of Art and Technology in Paris and brought the author a silver medal. Further foreign presentations took place in Lille (1937), Ottawa (1938), Prague (1947), Budapest (1948), in 1948-49, on the occasion of the Exhibition of Polish Graphics, in Brussels, Ghent, The Hague, Rotterdam, Vienna, in 1952 - in Venice, in 1955 - in the USA, China, Brussels, Tournai, Bucharest ("Exhibition of Polish Poster"). Individual exhibitions of the artist's works were held in Warsaw in 1947, 1969 and 1987.