Jan Waclaw ZAWADOWSKI (1891-1982), Landscape; 1976

oil, cardboard; 43 x 61 cm
Signed, p.d.: Zawado
(on the back a sticker with the inscription Jan Wacław Zawadowski (illegible inscription) 1976)
Provenance: private collection Poland

Outstanding painter and pedagogue, alumnus of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. A student of, among others, Jozef Pankiewicz, whose work, like Cezanne's, had a profound influence on his painting. After moving to Paris in 1912, he joined artists associated with Montmartre, such as Modigliani, Zborowski and Apollinaire. In the early days of his creative work, Zawadowski mainly depicted still lifes, portraits painted in cool colors or views of suburban Paris neighborhoods. He was an excellent colorist. From 1918 he signed his works with the pseudonym "Zawado." He painted in oil and watercolor. Irena Kossowska in the Dictionary of Polish Painters characterizes his art as follows: "he developed an individual formula of landscape painting, synthetic and decorative at the same time, with juicy, luminous colors. He built forms with broad, sweeping brushstrokes, creating dynamized compositions of varied texture." The artist also painted landscapes of Provence. These subjects, according to Kossowska, "provided the artist only a pretext for creating compositions close to allusive abstraction; their essence was the interrelationship of color patches distributed on the plane of the canvas." Zawadowski spent four years in Spain (1915-1919). The artist participated in exhibitions of Cassirer galleries in Berlin, Munich or Cologne, Independent Salons, Autumn Salons, expositions of Polish art in galleries des Beaux-Arts or Bernheim. Zawadowski presented his works in Poland and abroad, including at the Municipal Art Gallery in Lodz, the Adams Gallery in London and the Institute of Art Propaganda in Warsaw. "Zawado" was very active artistically. In 1928, he was one of the founders of the Cercle des Artistes Polonais in Paris and the Jednoróg Artists' Guild. The artist took over the management of the Cracow branch of the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris after his professor, Jozef Pankiewicz (he headed it until 1940). After the war, for example, he participated in exhibitions at Galerie Bénézit in Paris, the Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Cracow and the Museum of the Warsaw Archdiocese. Jan Zawadowski's posthumous exhibition took place at the Musée Granet in Aix-en-Provence in 1983.