Gustav Gwozdecky, STILL NATURE WITH ROSES

42.7 x 37.6cm - oil, canvas pasted on cardboard signed p.d.: GWOZDECKI

Gustaw Gwozdecki (Warsaw 1880 - Paris 1935) - painter, sculptor and printmaker; studied in Warsaw, in 1899 in Munich, then with Jan Stanislawski at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, and later at Konrad Krzyzanowski's private school in Warsaw. In 1903 he went to Paris, where he still studied in the studio of the sculptor Ponscarme. In Paris, from 1904, he exhibited his paintings and sculptures many times at the Salon de la Sociéte des Beaux-Arts and the Salon d'Automne. In 1912 and 1913 he held solo exhibitions in his own studio, attracting the attention of French critics including Andre Salmon and Guillaume. Apollinaire. He also sent his works to national exhibitions (including exhibitions of "Art" and the Formist group). He was an important figure in the Polish art colony in France. In 1914, thanks to his efforts, the Polish Academy of Painting was opened in Paris (its activities were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I). In 1915 he was in New York, and from then on he traveled there many times, being active, among other things, in the Committee on Polish-American Art Relations and exhibiting his painting and sculptural works. He was involved in art theory, published articles on painting, and was the author of On Evolution in Painting. In addition, he was a composer and pianist. The evolution of the form of his works is evident in his painting - from his early works associated with the currents of Symbolism and Expressionism, through a clear fascination with Fauvism, the art of Matisse and van Dongen, to paintings close in form to the classicism of the 1920s. He painted landscapes, portraits, symbolic compositions, still lifes and flower bouquets alluding to the compositions of Japanese painters active in the 1920s in Paris.