Size: 18.5 x 24 cm
Signed and dated in pencil at the bottom: 'W. Romanowicz 39'
Condition
framed work
Biography
Painter, sculptor and graphic artist, doctor by profession.In 1924 he began his education at the Adam Mickiewicz State Gymnasium in Novogrudok, after graduating in 1930 he studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius. Four years later, he received his diploma and passed the exam, thanks to which he was authorized to work as a teacher of drawing in high schools. At the same time he began his studies at the Faculty of Medicine of his alma mater, studying in the third year, in October 1936 he took a job as a demonstrator in the Department of Descriptive Anatomy run by Michal Reicher and Witold Sylvanowicz. Later he became an assistant and participated in dissecting exercises with students. After the outbreak of World War II, he found employment at Stefan Batory University, and from October 1, 1939 until the closing of the university on December 15, he taught artistic anatomy at the Faculty of Fine Arts. Studying medicine, he did not stop his artistic work, creating woodcuts and copperplate prints and painting landscapes using oil technique, and for some time he also used aquatint. From 1935 to 1940 he participated in the archaeological and conservation work taking place under the direction of Jan Borowski and Jerzy Hoppen on the ruins of the castle in Trakai. In 1936 Walenty Romanowicz participated in the Second International Woodcut Exhibition held in Warsaw, where he exhibited two works. A year later he was a co-founder of the Vilnius Group, with which he exhibited his paintings until 1939. In 1940 he took part in archaeological and conservation work on the Kaunas Castle. In addition to his conservation work, he created sketches and drawings of the architecture and its surroundings. On the basis of materials collected in Trakai starting in 1941, he created the so-called "Trakai cycle", initially it was to include six graphic boards, and eventually the artist created a collection of thirty-two engravings, work on them was completed in 1944. The artist died tragically in December 1945 in Vilnius.
The collection of Valentine Romanowicz's works is in the Library of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, and was donated there by the artist's widow, painter Aldona Romanowicz.
