Piotr Gogolewski, Portrait of a girl in a Krakow costume

pastel, paper, dimensions 68 x 48 cm, signed l. d. "WGogolewski"

The set of works made in pastel on paper presented in this auction shows that their creator is not only faithful to the theme of the Polish countryside and native landscape, but achieves considerable proficiency in this difficult painting technique, indicating a thorough professional background. Present on the art market and sold to good effect, he does not fully reveal his identity to us. Coming from the same collection, works signed both "Gzyms" and "W. Gogolewski" are undoubtedly of the same hand. Those found in the offer of antique shops and auction houses are attributed, regardless of the signature on them, to Piotr Gogolewski (1931-2013) - an artist educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, studying both interior design and painting and conservation. This explains the artist's good technique, skill in composition and dexterity in rendering the subject matter in both landscapes and genre scenes, with always lovely girls in Krakow costumes, or in portraits of beautiful-eyed Krakow women. Without prejudging whether such attribution of these works is correct, we add at the end of our offer Polish poppies by the same author, who is equally skilled in painting bouquets of field flowers.