Stanisław Grabowski (1901–1957)
Portrait of a Woman, 1930s
pastel on paper, 42 x 31.5 cm
signed lower left: S. Grabowski
He took his first drawing lessons in Libawa with a local teacher, Szklerys, painting landscapes from the vicinity of his hometown and copying paintings by Józef Pankiewicz. In 1914, he left for Rybińsk on the Volga. There, he studied at Szczygłów’s private studio. In 1919, he stayed in Petrograd, where he encountered European painting for the first time at the Hermitage. That same year, he moved to Warsaw. There, he studied at the School of Fine Arts under the guidance of K. Tichy, Wł. Skoczylas, and W. Jastrzębowski. In 1923, in Prof. Kotarbiński’s studio, he met 19-year-old Nadezhda Wanda Chodasiewicz, whom he married a year later. In 1926, the couple left for Paris, where they continued their studies in the studios of F. Léger and A. Ozenfant at the Académie Moderne. After his divorce from Wanda, who took her professor’s surname and became Nadia Leger, Grabowski left for Spain for three years. Upon his return, he settled in Paris.
During the war, he lived in the south of France, spending the longest time in Nice and the Grasse area. After the war, he returned to Paris and took up residence at 2 Passage Dantzing in the famous “La Ruche.” In the early 1950s, having himself experienced a life of exile, Grabowski welcomed Mieczysław Janikowski—who was more than a dozen years his junior—into his modest studio-apartment. During this period, Grabowski took an active part in the artistic life of Paris, exhibiting at the Salons and in private galleries. He held exhibitions in London and New York, and also regularly sent his works to exhibitions in Warsaw, Poznań, and Kielce. Grabowski’s artistic style developed and took shape through constant engagement with contemporary French painting. The artist was subject to many influences, yet he was able to imprint his own style on his works and create his own world, situated somewhere on the border between reality and poetic vision. The final form of his works and their color palette depended to a large extent on the artist’s mood and state of mind; he always approached his work emotionally stirred, never indifferently. Most of Stanisław Grabowski’s works are housed at the National Museum in Warsaw and the Museum of Art in Łódź, whose pre-war collection of European avant-garde art was established largely thanks to the assistance and connections of the Grabowski couple.
