Dimensions: 49 x 64 cm
Signed and dated at the bottom on the board: 'Szukalski 18- June - 1952'.
Biography
In 1903, he and his parents moved to the United States. As a 13-year-old boy, he attended the Institute of Art in Chicago, where he drew the attention of his teachers to his unparalleled talent as a sculptor. In 1909, at the urging of the sculptor Antoni Popiel, who was in the US - his father decided to send the 15-year-old Stach to the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. He was an extremely colorful figure in the artistic milieu of interwar Poland - adored by a group of young artists, gathered in the Rogate Heart Szczep, which he founded, and harshly criticized by a group of older artists. A fanatic of pre-Slavism and the myth of Polish power, he leaned toward historical and allegorical themes, using elements of geometric stylization on the formal side. In 1936-39 he executed a commission in Katowice for bas-reliefs for the Silesian Museum building, which was under construction. In 1939 he left Poland and settled permanently in California, where he devoted most of his time to solving prehistoric riddles and mysteries of ancient human history, the emergence and formation of languages, faiths, customs, art, the migration of peoples, and sculptural works became secondary. The last retrospective exhibition of his works, the first in the post-war period and the last during his lifetime, was held in May 1978 at the Palace of Art in Cracow. During the war, almost all of the artist's work created in Poland was destroyed.
