Dimensions: 76 x 63 cm
Signed l.d.: 'GWOZDECKI'.
Origins
Shannon's auction house, Milford, Connecticut, United States, October 2014
private collection, Poland
DESA Unicum, May 2018
private collection, Poland
Biography
Studied around 1889 with Stanislaw Grocholski - the painter's artistic studies were chaotic and often interrupted by financial troubles. For a period of time he studied and Konrad Krzyzanowski and probably around 1900 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. In 1903 he received a scholarship to go to Paris, where he began to study sculpture in the studio of H. Ponscarme and settled there permanently.He exhibited regularly in Parisian salons - in the period 1904 - 34.In Poland there were individual exhibitions of the painter in Poznan, Lviv and Krakow (1908). Since 1916 he alternated between Paris and New York, where in 1922 several works. Initially in the artist's work can be seen the influence of Symbolism, Expressionism, later French Fauvism. In the 1920s his work was dominated by portraits with disharmonious colors and soft contours, giving the representation a stylized look. He was also a graphic artist and the author of a series of articles on art published in Lvov magazines. Recalling the 1913 Paris exhibition, which exhibited Gwozdecky's works, Leon Chwistek wrote: 'As far as modern art is concerned, it has given me little great emotion. However, I must admit that the Autumn Salon of 1913 in Paris, where there was a colossal performance of Cubism with huge canvases by Picabia, with Archipenko, Picasso and our Gwozdecky, in addition to some wonderful Matisse, shook me to the core.
