Wacław Szymanowski

Szymanowski in his studio, working on the Chopin Monument

Szymanowski was born in Warsaw and was the son of Wacław Szymanowski, the journalist and writer (9 July 1821 – 21 December 1886), and the father of Wacław Szymanowski, the physicist and politician (14 April 1895 – 15 January 1965).[1]

Until about 1895 the painter-cum-sculptor occupied himself mainly with executing genre paintings of Polish mountaineers and Hutsuls, and portraits.[1]

He then turned to sculpture, creating compositions in Art Nouveau-Symbolist style. He designed the monuments to Artur Grottger in Kraków (1907) and to Frédéric Chopin in Warsaw; tomb monuments (including his father's at Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery); and portrait busts.[1] He died in Warsaw at age 70.

In 1907 Szymanowski designed the bronze statue of Frédéric Chopin that now stands in Warsaw's Łazienki Park. The statue was originally to have been erected in 1910, on the centenary of Chopin's birth, but it was delayed by controversy about the design, then by the outbreak of World War I. The statue was finally cast and erected after the war, in 1926.[1]

Portrait of a young Szymanowski by Stanisław Jakub Rostworowski (1888)

• List of Poles—Fine arts

• Encyklopedia powszechna PWN (PWN Universal Encyclopedia), vol. 4, Warsaw, Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1976.
• Encyklopedia Warszawy (Encyclopedia of Warsaw), 1994.
• "Szymanowski Wacław". Internetowa encyklopedia PWN (in Polish). Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. Retrieved 28 March 2008.

Media related to Wacław Szymanowski at Wikimedia Commons