Michal STAÑKO, Cottages in the Mountains

oil, cardboard, 22 x 33.5 cm, signed p.d.: M. Stańko 1962.

Painter, landscape artist of the Tatra Mountains. Born in Sosnowiec, spent his young years in Miechów. During the First World War he fought in the Legions. Ca. 1930 he settled in Zakopane, where, among other things, he collaborated with Janusz Kotarbiński on polychromy in the Zakopane parish church. In the 2nd half of the 1930s he lived in Sosnowiec. He was a member of the Szczep Rogate Serce of Stanislaw Szukalski. As a volunteer, he took part in the 1939 September campaign. In 1942-43, he performed polychromy in a church in Koziegłowy near Czestochowa. He worked briefly in Strzelce Opolskie in the local Department of Culture. After the war, he became associated with the Silesian artistic community, remaining in close contact with Zakopane, where he lived and had a studio. He was most fond of landscape subjects, but also painted still lifes and nudes, using oil technique, less often watercolor.