Born: June 20, 1930, Falenty, Poland Born: June 4(?), 1875 in Paris, France Died: March 27(?), 1961 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France
Early days. Landowski was born to Polish refugees of the January 1861 Uprising. He completed his secondary studies at the Collège Rollin, where he acquired a broad literary background. He excelled in philosophy and his plan was to write drama in verse. In 1892, he met Henri Barbusse in his first year of prep school. The two became long term friends and shared a militant humanism, if not the same political engagement (Barbusse became Stalin’s apologist). In 1893, he entered the Académie Jullian where he studied under the painter Jules Lefebvre. At the same time, he attended daily dissections for the anatomical plates Professor Faraboeuf had assigned him to draw for his classes at the Medical School. Later, at the height of his fame, Landowski would sculpt a statue of him for the Medical School as a kind of homage and appreciation. Landowski considered highly accurate knowledge of anatomy to be the building block of a sculptor’s art. He had also a passionate interest in boxing that later emerged in his bronzes. In 1895, he entered the Ecole des Beaux Arts where he studied for five years.
Career. He won the Prix de Rome in 1900 with his statue of Fighting David. In 1906 his The Sons of Cain was a huge success at the Salon and was purchased by the State (the statue is currently installed in the Jardins des Tuileries). He went on to a fifty-five year career that produced over thirty five monuments in the city of Paris and twelve more in the surrounding area. Among those the Monument to Wilbur Wright and the Forerunners of Aviation erected in Le Mans in 1920, and the Monument to Clément Ader. Also: the Art Deco figure of St. Genevieve on the 1928 Pont de la Tournelle. He also created 'Les Fantomes', the French Memorial to the Second Battle of the Marne which stands upon the Butte de Chalmont in Northern France. It was the spirit of greatness guiding him when he embarked on his monumental creations: Architecture in Reims, the Monument to Unknown Artists at the Pantheon in Paris and Reformation Wall in Geneva created with Henri Bouchard. After the statue of Sun Yat-Sen for his mausoleum in the Purple Mountains near Nanjing, sculpted in 1928 at the request of the Kuomintang executive committee, Landowski was commissioned in 1931 to create what is no doubt his most famous work, Christ the Redeemer, at the request of Brazil and in collaboration with Heitor da Silva Costa, the author of the architectural structure. He also held official posts. In 1933, he was appointed director of the Académie de France in Rome, then in 1937, director of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he established the simultaneous teaching of three arts in response to the contemporary needs of monumental sculpture. ‘‘This work,’’ he stated, ‘‘obliges the architect to become aware of his responsibility as project manager; it shows painters and sculptors that unchecked imagination does not always bring the greatest creative joy. In 1944, Landowski was summoned to appear before the purge commission of the Société des Artistes Français for a trip he’d made to Germany three years earlier. The commission established the purpose of the trip was to obtain the freedom of Beaux-Arts students being held prisoner and his name was cleared. During the last 15 years of his life, Landowski’s time was split between major works, like a Michelangelo at the height of his power, maturity and volition: a Fall of Icarus, the Door of the New Medical School in the Rue des Saints Pères in 1954, and the four Cambodian Dancers (1947). His 3-meter-tall Michelangelo was like a testament that perfectly incarnated his dream of the struggle with matter.
Family. He was the father of the painter, Nadine Landowski (1908-1943), the composer Marcel Landowski (1915-1999) and the pianist and painter, Françoise Landowski-Caillet (1917-2007).
Honors, awards. Landowski won a gold medal at the 1928 Olympic Games for Sculpture. A museum dedicated to Landowski's work is in the Boulogne-Billancourt suburb of Paris with over 100 works on display.
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