Dimensions: 80 x 44.5 cm
Signed, dated and inscribed l.g.: 'S. Grabowski | Paris | 1927'
on the canvas hardly legible description and a paper exhibition sticker of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts in Warsaw
Exhibited
Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts, Warsaw, interwar period
Biography
After first learning painting in Russia and Warsaw, the artist left in 1926 with his young wife Nadezhda Wanda Chodasiewicz-Grabowska (later Nadia Leger) for Paris to study in the studios of Fernand Leger and Amédée Ozenfant at the Academie Moderne. He remained in France until his untimely death. Grabowski's work developed and established itself in constant contact with contemporary French painting. The artist succumbed to many influences, but was able to give his works the stamp of his own style, to create his own world, situated somewhere on the border between reality and poetic vision. The final shape of his works, their colors depended largely on his mood, the state of mind of the artist, who approached his work always emotionally stimulated, never indifferent. Toward the end of his life, he provided hospitality to Mieczyslaw Janikowski in his Paris apartment. Stanislaw Grabowski is one of those outstanding painters whose work is not yet fully appreciated in the achievements of Polish painting of the first half of the 20th century. The artist lived and worked in France almost all his life. At the age of 25, he and his wife, also a painter, Nadia Chodasiewicz, went to study art in Paris, where they both studied at the Academie Moderne under Leger and Amédée Ozenfant. The marriage did not stand the test of time and soon Nadia became the wife of Ferdinand Leger. During this period, the artist became friends with Henry Hayden. After the war, which he spent in southern France, he returned to Paris, where he settled in a famous house - a hovel on Passage Danzig la Ruche, which had previously housed the studios of Chagall, Soutine, Kandinsky, among others. Landscape was the main subject of his painting interests. At first, he painted color-saturated Provençal landscapes; later, the form became more dramatic and expressive, and the coloring became darker. He also painted still lifes and scenes in interiors. He exhibited primarily at salons in Paris. Professor Władysława Jaworska wrote about his work: "Various artistic tendencies often appeared in his paintings, recurring more than once and in later periods, but always subordinated to his personal artistic vision."
