Jan Lebenstein

Jan Lebenstein (1930, Brest-Litovsk - 1999, Kraków) was a painter and graphic artist, the creator of an original variety of figurative painting with elements of Surrealism and abstraction. He studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, under Eugeniusz Eibisch and Artur Nacht-Samborski among others. He made his debut at the generational exhibition „Against War, Against Fascism” at the Arsenał in Warsaw (1955), where his nostalgic landscapes of the suburbs were awarded. In 1956 he had his first solo exhibition at the Theatre on Tarczyńska Street, run by his friend Miron Białoszewski.

He created successively „Drawn Figures”, „Hieratic Figures” and finally „Axial Figures” - simplified, totemic human figures, most often female, captured vertically around a vertical axis, precise and rich in tones, sometimes verging on abstraction. In 1959, for the cycle of „Axial Figures”, he received the Grand Prix at the 1st International Biennale of Young Artists in Paris, which brought him international fame; from that time he lived permanently in France (from 1971 a French citizen).

In the following years he drew his themes from ancient literature, mythology and the Bible, creating expressive, fantastical-symbolic compositions with animal motifs - a kind of bestiary. Associated with the milieu of the Paris „Kultura” and the Lambert Gallery, he was friends with Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, whose stories he illustrated; he also made cycles of illustrations for, among others, Orwell's „Animal Farm” and the „Book of Job”. The richest collection of his works (brought from France by Mariusz Hermansdorfer) is held by the National Museum in Wrocław, and the „Axial Figures” entered MoMA in New York. A retrospective of his work was held at the Zachęta in Warsaw in 1992.