Bolesław Cybis

Bolesław Cybis (1895, Massandra estate in Crimea - 1957, Trenton, New Jersey) was a painter, graphic artist, sculptor and ceramicist - one of the great individualities of Polish art of the interwar period. He studied painting at the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw, in the studio of Tadeusz Pruszkowski, and graphic art under Władysław Skoczylas.

In 1925 he was one of the founders of the Brotherhood of St Luke - one of the most important groupings of the interwar period, bringing together Pruszkowski's students fascinated by old art, especially the Renaissance, and attaching enormous importance to the quality of craft. The members of the Brotherhood created historical and biblical compositions, portraits and landscapes; in 1937-1939 Cybis also taught drawing at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.

His own style crystallised partly thanks to journeys to Italy and Africa (1930). His initial fascination with tradition was replaced by an interest in the post-Cubist avant-garde and by visionary, unsettling pictures on the border of magical realism - from stylised „Łowicz types” to deformed heads of supernatural size. Among his best-known works are „Primavera” and „The Toilette”. Cybis was also interested in new technologies, combining painting with relief.

In the interwar period he was one of the most frequently exhibited Polish painters; his works entered collections all over the world - including the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Brooklyn Museum in New York and the Musée Rath in Geneva. He co-created the decorations of the Polish pavilions at the World's Fairs in Paris (1937) and New York (1939) and the décor of the ocean liner „Batory”.

His departure for the USA in 1939 - to work on the Polish pavilion at the New York World's Fair - turned out to be a turning point: the outbreak of war made return impossible, and Cybis remained in the States until the end of his life. There he abandoned painting in favour of ceramics: together with his wife Maria he ran the Cordey China Inc. porcelain factory in Trenton, and in 1954 he founded the experimental Cybis Porcelain Art studio, gaining recognition as one of the leading American makers of artistic porcelain. His works are held, among others, in the National Museum in Warsaw, the District Museum in Bydgoszcz and the Vistula Museum in Kazimierz Dolny. Today, with the growing interest in the Brotherhood of St Luke and in interwar art, Cybis's original, „magical” work is being read anew.