Leopold Lewicki, RETAILER (STREET SELLER), 1932-1933

12.0 x 7.8cm - toned etching, paper

Signed in lead under the engraving: "Street vendor" Lewicki

on the reverse: dedication g.: To Professor Dr. J. Starzynski | Lewicki



Work from the period of the artist's studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. Mentioned and reproduced in:

Artistic avant-garde from the circle of the KPP - exhibition of the Cracow Group 1932-1937. catalog - part I, Palace of Art, Cracow V-VI 1979, p. 23, cat. 207.

Leopold Lewicki. Exhibition of paintings and prints. From the collection of Felicja and Bogdan Kędziorek, Nautilus Antiquarian Salon, Connaisseur Salon of Works of Art, Kraków 9-23 XI 2001; followed by a traveling exhibition: Czas Gallery, Bedzin 24 XI - 4 XII 2001, Art. New Media Gallery, Warsaw 5-19 I 2002, Zamek Cultural Center, Poznań 8-24 II 2002, p. 10, cat. 20, il. 23; ibid. references: Krzysztofory, Kraków IV-V 1992; University of Silesia, Cieszyn VI 1992.

Leopold Lewicki studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow in 1925-1932, and the majority of his output in metal engraving techniques comes from these years (later he practiced linocut and woodcut). He was a member of the first "Cracow Group" (1933-1937), sympathizing with the communists. He was repressed by the police for these associations and participation in demonstrations. Together with other members of the group (including Maria Jarema, Stanislaw Osostowicz, Jonasz Stern), he co-founded the last generation of the Polish avant-garde before World War II. In addition to social issues, the group's explorations were directed towards a peculiar kind of brutal realism, its members independently arrived at abstraction based on expressionism. Levitsky spent the years of World War II in Chortkiv (1939-1941) and in the Samarkand region, where he worked as a teacher and served in a construction battalion (1941-1944). From 1944 he lived permanently in Lviv. He was active in the Artists' Union there. In 1970 he was awarded the title of Distinguished Artist of the Ukrainian SSR. After the war, he created in the convention of socialist realism in force in the USSR. He practiced easel and decorative painting, sculpture, printmaking and applied graphics (book graphics).