Franciszek Starowieyski, Alfred de Musset

Watercolor on paper, stamped “from the drawings of Franciszek Starowieyski.”

Dimensions with frame: 40x52.5 cm (29x41 cm)

Franciszek Andrzej Bobola Starowieyski, pen name Jan Byk (Bratkówka 1930–2009 Warsaw)—Polish graphic artist, painter, illustrator, and set designer. He came from a noble family bearing the Biberstein coat of arms. From 1949 to 1952, he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków under Wojciech Weiss and Adam Marczyński, and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw under Michał Bylina, where he received his diploma in 1955. He gained popularity in the 1960s with a series of theater and film posters. He worked in painting, poster art, commercial design, and theater and television set design. He was the creator of what is known as “the theater of drawing.” His paintings were characterized by a fascination with the Rubenesque female form, sensuality, and reflections on transience and death. He exhibited extensively in galleries and museums in Poland, as well as in Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland, the U.S., Italy, and elsewhere. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including: the Grand Prix at the São Paulo Biennial of Contemporary Art (1973), the Grand Prix for a film poster at the Cannes Film Festival (1974), the Grand Prix at the International Festival in Paris (1975), the Hollywood Reporter’s Annual Key Award (1975–1976), and awards at the International Poster Biennial in Warsaw and the Chicago International Film Festival (1979–1982). In his “theaters of drawing,” he combined both arts into one, a “spectacle of all arts,” a media phenomenon in which the act of creation itself, its theatrical elements, and—thanks to the artist’s erudition—its literary aspects hold equal artistic value to the work itself in the traditional sense of the word. In Starowieyski’s paintings, the real world merged with the creations of his downright “unbridled” imagination, and his work ostentatiously drew on the old 17th-century masters and was steeped in the grotesque and humor. The painting *Divina Polonia Rapta Per Europa Profana*, which means “Divine Poland Abducted by Secular Europe,” exhibited at the Polish Mission to the European Union in Brussels (1998), sparked much controversy. In 1994, he received the “Golden Mask” Award for his set design for Krzysztof Penderecki’s comedy-drama *Ubu the King, or the Poles* at the Grand Theater in Łódź, and in 2004, the Minister of Culture’s Award in the field of visual arts. In 2005, he was awarded the “Gloria Artis” Gold Medal for Merit to Culture by Minister of Culture Waldemar Dąbrowski.