FRANCISZEK WOJCIK Art for Sale at Auction

b. 1903 - d. 1984

Franciszek Wójcik was one of the most prolific post-war painters in the Zakopane region. His works were displayed at more than 50 individual exhibitions in Poland and abroad and at numerous collective exhibitions in Poland. He was closely connected with Zakopane’s artistic milieu and a member of the Polish Association of Artists and Designers. His paintings won several awards.

Wójcik was born in Wojciechów near Lublin and spent his childhood in Cieszyn. After being interned during the First World War and doing military service, he settled in Kresy (the Eastern borderlands of Poland). Later, he moved to Kraków, where he painted and worked as a coach of the Polish Gymnastic Society „Sokól”.

In 1923, he completed a course at the art department of the State Industrial School in Lwów, then studied at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts between 1932 and 1939. After graduation, he received a scholarship at Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome.

His studies in Kraków under professor Stanislaw Kamocki’s direction and their later friendship had a big impact on Wójcik’s work which had close connections with the Realism movement in art; the artist’s favourite areas of creation were landscape, portrait and still-life. He also painted church interiors. Wójcik employed different techniques, such as tempera, watercolour and pastel, but he preferred oil painting. When he settled in Zakopane, he painted mostly landscapes of the Tatra mountains and the Podhale region. Many of his paintings can still be found in private collections.