Prominent Poles
Olga Boznańska Polish-French modernism era painter active in Munich and Paris
Born: April 15, 1865, Krakow (Austro-Hungarian partition of Poland, presently Poland)
Died: October 26, 1940, Paris, France.
Early days. Her father- Adam Nowina Boznanski- was an engineer; her French mother- Eugenia Mondan- was interested in art. Olga Boznańska learned how to draw since she was a little girl. She learned painting from Antoni Adam Piotrowski, Kazimierz Pochwalski, and then at Baraniecki’s Paimting Courses. In 1886 she continued studying in Munich. As a woman she could not study at the Academy of Fine Arts so she studied privately at Kricheldorf and Durr’s schools.
Career. In 1896 she leased her own workshop and began exhibit her works in Munich, Warsaw, Berlin and Vienna. She was a portraitist who worked mainly in her workshop, painting often on the cardboard. As she herself emphasized she was not an impressionist - her work is often categorized as post-impressionist. In 1898 she got a golden medal from the archduke Karl Ludwig in Vienna for the Portrait of the painter Paul Nauen, and then in London a distinction for the Portrait of miss Mary Breme. After her recent successes she got an offer to bcome the chairwoman of the painting chair in the women’s department of Krakow’s School of Fine Arts which she rejected. In 1898 she moved to Paris. In 1900 she got a gold medal at the Lonon’s New Gallery exhibition. In 1901 the French government bought to the state’s art coollection her paintings Bretonka and Portrait of Miss Dygat. In 1907 Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh awarded her a silver medal. Together with Claude Monet and August Renoir she represented France at the 1912 Pittsburgh exhibition. She got a silver medal at the Amsterdam exhibition. In 1923 she represented again the French school together with such artists like Pierre Bonnard and Maurice Denis. However her fame slowly subsided. Request for her portraits was diminishing and her main source of subsistence was the rent from the apartment house in Krakow. At the 1938 venician Biennale she sold five paintings , among them Portrait of Mrs. Dygat bought by the king of Italy.
Private. Her mother died in 1892 and her father in 1906 Her longtime engagement with the painter Jozef Czajkowski was broken in 1900.
Prizes, awards. 1912: Legion d’Honneur (France);1924: Oficer’s Cross of the Order Polonia Restituta (Poland); 1936: Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature (Poland); 1937 Grand Prix on the World Exhibition in Paris (France); 1938: Commander’s Cross of the Order Polonia Restituta (Poland).
Based on an article that appears in Wikipedia (with modifications):
Wikipedia (in Polish)
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
Other sources:
Wikipedia
Galeria includes photos of many of her paintings
Publlshed on 6/12/15
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Prominent Poles
