Dimensions: 33 x 23 cm
signed and dated p.d.: 'Kubicki 13'
signed l.g.: 'Skizze' and medr.d.: '2 [hardly legible]', stamp in lower right corner of composition: 'Versetzungs. | Prufüng'.
Origins
K & K Auktionen, Heidelberg, June 2015
private collection, Poland
DESA Unicum, February 2019
private collection, Poland
Biography
Beginning in 1908, he attended the architecture department at the Berliner Bauakademie, the philology department at Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität, and botany and zoology in parallel. However, he did not complete any faculties. He was a member of the Thomas Zan Society and the National Group. He maintained lively contacts with the community centered around the periodical Die Aktion and Der Sturm, in which he published his first artworks. His subsequent studies, which began in 1911 at the Berliner Kunstakademie, were interrupted by World War I. He was drafted into the German army and sent to Greater Poland. In 1918 he went to Berlin, where in 1922 he founded the "Progressive" group, exhibiting his works in Düsseldorf, Aachen, Amsterdam, Chicago and Moscow. By 1933 he was collaborating with "a-z" magazine. At that time, his work was already moving away from expressionism toward cubism and constructivism. In 1917 in Poznań, while treating his wounds, he met Jerzy Hulewicz, who was then founding the magazine "Zdrój". In its pages Kubicki published his woodcuts, poems, translations of texts and program statements. Together with the editor-in-chief of the Poznań magazine, as well as with Władysław Skotarek, Stefan Szmaja, Jan Jerzy Wroniecki, August Zamoyski and his wife Małgorzata Kubicki, he founded the expressionist group "Bunt". He participated in all exhibitions of this group: in Berlin (1918), Düsseldorf, Poznan, Krakow (together with the Formists) and Lviv (1919-20). Together with his wife, a graphic artist, painter and poet, he maintained contacts with the publisher of the avant-garde Berlin magazine "Die Aktion" and the gallery of the same name since 1916. Around 1917, they initiated exhibition and publishing contacts between Polish and German Expressionists. Kubicki, as one of seven artists from Poland and the only representative of the 1919-20 Revolt group, exhibited his works in the most famous avant-garde gallery "Der Sturm" and simultaneously published his prints in Herwarth Walden's magazine. In 1933 he moved from Berlin to Poznan. Before the outbreak of World War II, he tried to travel to civil war-stricken Spain. He abandoned painting in favor of poetry and literature. During the war he helped the Home Army. During the German occupation, he became involved with the Polish Resistance, acting as a courier to the Manchurian Embassy in Berlin. He died in unexplained circumstances, probably at the hands of the Gestapo.
