Zofia Kobylińska-Olszewska, FLOWERS IN A VASE, 1980s

37.50 x 27.50 cm - watercolor on cardboard
signed lower right: ZK
signed on the reverse, upper left: Z. Kobylińska 4. [in a circle],
on the top frame rail in marker: FSR 47

Zofia Kobylińska-Olszewska (1920–2011), a Polish painter and printmaker who settled in England in 1947. During World War II, she was imprisoned in the Auschwitz and Ravensbrück camps. After the war, she made her way to Paris, then to General Anders’s Army in Rome, and from there, with the troops, to London, where she settled permanently. Her experiences in the camps led to long-term illnesses and medical treatments, during which she received support from the Sue Ryder Foundation. From the early 1960s, she studied at the Polish School of Painting under the guidance of Marian Bohusz-Szyszka. In 1964, she graduated, receiving a diploma in Easel Painting and Applied Graphics from that school. She pursued her artistic career alongside her paid work in London offices. Professor Szyszko-Bohusz remained her artistic mentor and friend. The 1970s and 1980s marked a period of creative flourishing and the artist’s greatest activity in the art world (exhibitions, among others, in London, Stuttgart, and Poland—beginning in the 1990s). She also participated in the annual exhibitions of the Association of Visual Artists in Great Britain. Her painting continued the tradition of color in Polish art. After the artist’s death, her family donated her legacy to the collection of the Foundation for Polish Emigrant Art 1939–1989 in Warsaw.