Jan DUDEK, St. Barbara

Jan Dudek by Stefan Zbigniewicz (1904-1942), footnote St. Barbara, cast miniature model of the statue from the AGH building in Cracow. Bronze, height 31 cm, unsigned. Cast by Jan Dudek in copper and partially gilded statue on the roof of the main building of AGH, installed on 24.08.1939, was destroyed by the Nazis in January 1940. With minor changes, it was reconstructed and placed back only in 1999. Zbigniewicz's bozzetto, made of painted plaster on a scale of 1:10 (88 cm high) and a bronze cast 31 cm high, are kept in the AGH museum's collection, while pre-war photographs also show other models (including this sculpture) and the process of creating the wooden hoof on which the tin statue was patted. Zbigniewniewicz, a student of X. Dunikowski. Portrayed by Olga Boznańska. Among other things, he was the author of the design for the Monument to the Fallen Silesian Insurgents in Chorzow (1927, non-western); statues of evangelists on the facade of the Czestochowa Seminary on Bernardyńska Street in Cracow; the monument to Ignacy Krasicki at the castle in Dubiecko (1935); the Schützer family tomb in Rakowice. At the TPSP Salon in Cracow he exhibited a bronze portrait in 1934, and in May 1937, at the First All-Polish Sculpture Salon at the IPS a bronze Negro (item 139). During the war, he headed the Artists' Café and organized, together with J. Hrynkowski, the puppet theater "The Birdy." He died executed in Auschwitz. Dudek, studied at Stanislaw Rogozh's carpentry and woodcarving workshop in Brzesko from 1928 to 1931. In the 1930s he was employed at Zbigniewniewicz's workshop in Cracow. Involved in the construction of a church in his hometown of Niedźwiedza near Dębno, he was the author of the sacred furnishings there, as well as neo-Gothic retables (Filipowice, 1943, Jadowniki, 1950). He was also involved in conservation.