Wacław Szymanowski (23 August 185922 July 1930) was a Polish sculptor and painter. He is best known for his

statue A statue is a free-standing sculpture in which the realistic, full-length figures of persons or animals are carved or cast in a durable material such as wood, metal or stone. Typical statues are life-sized or close to life-size; a sculpture t ...

of composer

Frédéric Chopin Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 1 March 181017 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leadin ...

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...

's Royal Baths Park (Łazienki Park).

Life

Szymanowski was born in Warsaw and was the son of , the journalist and writer (9 July 1821 – 21 December 1886), and the father of , the

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

and politician (14 April 1895 – 15 January 1965).''Encyklopedia powszechna PWN'' (1976), vol. 4, p. 372. Until about 1895 the painter-''cum''-sculptor occupied himself mainly with executing

genre painting Genre painting (or petit genre), a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attache ...

s of Polish mountaineers and

Hutsul The Hutsuls (sometimes the spelling variant: Gutsuls; uk, Гуцули, translit=Hutsuly; pl, Huculi, Hucułowie; ro, huțuli) are an ethnic group spanning parts of western Ukraine and Romania (i.e. parts of Bukovina and Maramureș). They ...

s, and portraits. He then turned to sculpture, creating compositions in

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

Symbolist Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...

style. He designed the monuments to

Artur Grottger Artur Grottger (11 November 1837 – 13 December 1867) was a Polish Romantic painter and graphic artist, one of the most prominent artists of the mid 19th century under the foreign partitions of Poland, despite a life cut short by incurable ill ...

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula, Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland un ...

(1907) and to

in Warsaw; tomb monuments (including his father's at Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery); and portrait busts. He died in Warsaw at age 70.

Chopin monument

In 1907 Szymanowski designed the bronze statue of

that now stands in Warsaw's Łazienki Park. The statue was originally to have been erected in 1910, on the centenary of Chopin's birth, but it was delayed by controversy about the design, then by the outbreak of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

. The statue was finally cast and erected after the war, in 1926.

Notes

References

* ''Encyklopedia powszechna PWN'' (''PWN Universal Encyclopedia''), vol. 4, Warsaw, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1976. * ''Encyklopedia Warszawy'' (''Encyclopedia of Warsaw''), 1994. *

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Szymanowski, Waclaw 1859 births 1930 deaths Polish sculptors Polish male sculptors 19th-century Polish painters 19th-century Polish male artists 20th-century Polish painters 20th-century Polish male artists Artists from Warsaw Art Nouveau painters Art Nouveau sculptors 20th-century sculptors 19th-century sculptors Polish male painters

Life

Chopin monument

See also

Notes

References

External links