Old Pastel Master: Stanislaw Wyspianski

Stanislaw Wyspianski self-portrait

Stanislaw Wyspianski (1869-1907)
self-portrait, 1902
pastel on paper, 38 x 38 cm (15×15″)
National Museum, Warsaw Poland

Stanislaw Wyspianski (1869-1907) was a Polish painter, pastellist, decorative artist, illustrator, writer and theater director. He was the son of the Kraków sculptor Franciszek Wyspianski and studied at the Kraków School of Fine Arts. In 1889 Wyspianski and Józef Mehoffer, the school’s most talented students, were appointed to complete a painted decorations for St Mary, Kraków, a task that prompted Wyspianski’s interest in both decorative painting and stained glass. The years 1890-1895 were devoted to traveling. Wyspiański visited Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Prague and France. The stay in France was regarded to be the major point in his artistic life. He studied at the private atelier Académie Colarossi. During the stay in France he got acquainted with Paul Gauguin. Together they visited art museums, where Wyspiański was bewitched by the beauty of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’s paintings.

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