Leonard PĘKALSKI (1896-1944), Woman in an Armchair [Seated].

watercolor, cardboard; 25 x 22 cm;
On the reverse, in pencil "22 akw".
In the catalog of the artist's posthumous monographic exhibition at the ZPAP in Warsaw, 1969, item 310, as the property of the artist's sister [titled "Sitting"].

Leonard Pękalski entered the Warsaw School of Fine Arts in 1913, where he studied under Edward Trojanowski, receiving scholarships from the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in 1915 and 1916. He collaborated with Trojanowski on polychrome work at the Lublin Castle.
In 1925-1929, he traveled to Italy, France and England. In October 1928 he took up an assistantship at the Warsaw SSP. and after the SSP was renamed the Academy, he was appointed associate professor of decorative painting on December 19, 1934.
He was one of the leading figures of the group "Pryzmat", bringing together students of Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski. Pękalski's first solo exhibition took place at the Garlinski Salon in 1930. In total, he took part in more than thirty exhibitions between 1930 and 1939, including in Paris in 1937 and New York in 1939. He painted still lifes, landscapes, figural and battle compositions and portraits. After his early paintings, showing characteristics of formist geometrization, he turned to the problems of color, which for him was not an end in itself, but a factor in the construction of forms taken from nature. In figural compositions with symbolic and mythological accents, he was closer to the classical tradition. The subjects of his harmonious and direct landscapes were Krasiczyn (1936), the environs of his native Grojec, and Warsaw's Mokotow. In his very personal portraits, he limited himself mainly to the circle of his closest family - parents, siblings. He was one of the founders of the Polish Military Organization in Grójec; he served the 1920 campaign as a cavalryman.