Stanisław Horno-Popławski

This cycle is rated as "oneiric, intuitively archetypal, symbolic" representing "metacultural female heads, which he developed until the last days of his life.", as expressed by dr. Dorota Grubba-Thiede, from the Academy of Fine Art Gdańsk, during a lecture performed for the Art Centre of Bydgoszcz (Polish: Bydgoskie Centrum Sztuki) on June 6, 2020.

In 2017, the newly open Bydgoszcz Art Centre (Polish: Bydgoskie Centrum Sztuki) has taken as patron name "Horno-Popławski". The gallery at 47 Jagiellońska street has organized an exhibition on the artist in February–March 2020.

Popławski's works keep to draw attention. In April 2005, an exhibition was held in the "Exhibition Hall" of Moscow titled "Stanislav Horno-Popławski. The road of art - the art of the road." The display included more than 50 sculptures of the artist loaned from Polish museums, among which the National Museums of Warsaw, Kraków, Poznań, Szczecin or Gdańsk. The exhibit covered works from the 1950s to the 1970s, up to the last ones created in the 1980s-1990s, in particular pieces from his cycle "The Dream of a Stone" (Polish: Sen Kamienia).

Commemorative plaques to his memory have been unveiled in 2005 (Gdańsk) and 2011 (Sopot).

In 2004, the Sopot exhibition „Stanisław Horno-Popławski. Droga sztuki- sztuka drogi” traveled to Lviv and Odessa.

Stanisław Horno-Popławski died on June 6, 1997, in Sopot.

Dr. Dorota Grubba-Thiede had the honor to meet the artist in Sopot in 1997. From this conversation stemmed an album-monograph edited by prof. Jerzy Malinowski with the cooperation of the sculptor's family, entitled Stanisław Horno-Popławski (1902-1997) - The Way of Art - The Art of the Way, published in 2002 by the State Art Gallery of Sopot.

On April 25, 1997, Horno-Popławski was awarded the title of doctor honoris causa from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk.

In 1996, Horno-Popławski was promoted doctor honoris causa of the University in Toruń, UMK of Toruń.

On January 26, 1990, as part of the decommunization, the statue was dismantled and moved to the nearby Bojańczyk brewery. On June 9, 1999, the figure without its pedestal was transferred to the Zamoyski Palace in Kozłówka and joined the Art Gallery of Socialism. The inscription plaque is still in the storage of the Włocławek Museum of the Kujawy and Dobrzyń lands (Polish: Muzeum Ziemi Kujawskiej i Dobrzyńskiej we Włocławku).

Unveiled on December 29, 1986, on the 68th anniversary of the Greater Poland Uprising, it is set up at the very place where originally stood the tomb containing the ashes of an unknown insurgent who died in June 1919. It was razed during WWII. The current monument, based on a design by Horno-Popławski, has been realized and cast by Aleksander Dętkoś, one of his student from Bydgoszcz.

From 1979 to 1983, thanks to Marian Turwid's suggestion, the sculptor moved to a small house in the botanical garden of Bydgoszcz, looking for a city "whose character guarantees the possibility of quiet creative work, and whose atmosphere is devoid of nervous hustle and bustle, which absorbs and disturbs focused actions". On July 22 of this year, then the official holiday in the Polish People's Republic, Horno-Popławski opened in the city garden an open-air gallery of his compositions, which he donated. The collection included the following works: "Partisan", "Memories of Bagrati", "Morena", "Copernicus", "Tadeusz Breyer", "Tehura", "Gruzinka", "Waiting", "Szota Rustawelli", "Colchida", "Żal", "Pogodna", "Beethoven" and "Hair". Unfortunately, most of these works have been stolen.

In 1978, the monument was restored, cleaned and patched with cement. In 1992, the sculpture was placed in the "Voivodeship Heritage list of Monuments". In 2000, the head of one of the statue was broken and quickly repaired. In March 2003, the monument was devastated again: one of the three figures was halved. In July 2003, the sculpture was restored anew. A scale reproduction of "Praczki" is present in one of Gdańsk museums.

The new monument, made of granite by Horno-Popławski is located on the very site of its predecessor, in today's Jan Kochanowski Park. The unveiling ceremony took place on May 18, 1968.

Julian Marchlewski was born in Włocławek in 1866. The unveiling of Horno-Popławski's monument occurred on May 1, 1964, with the participation of Zofia, Marchlewski's daughter. Built of granite, the five-meter-high monument was in the socialist realist style. On the pedestal was an inscription "To Julian Marchlewski, the Great Internationale Patriot, Society of Włocławek and Bydgoszcz. May 1, 1964".

Stanisław's works, during the post-war years, were exhibited in Poland, in Europe (Paris (1961), Berlin (1971), Bucharest (1972), Oslo and Essen (1974)), as well as in Asia (New Delhi, Kolkata, Bombay, Beijing). He won recognition for his merits in favour of the Polish Culture (1962, 1965, 1995) and was even awarded a gold medal at the "Contemporary Art Biennale" in Florence in 1969. He made two trips to his Georgian roots (1967, 1978), where two of his works are displayed (Kutaisi State Historical Museum and Niko Pirosmani Museum in Tbilisi).

Hi was married to P. Inga Stanisława, a sculptor as well. They had several children, among whom a daughter, P. Jolanta Ronczewska who married in 1960 Polish actor Ryszard Ronczewski.

As an outcome of a 1954 competition, he was granted the realization of a monument to Adam Mickiewicz placed in 1955 in the front yard of the "Palace of Culture and Science" in Warsaw.

In 1953 he was awarded the State Award Badge, 2nd echelon.

He took part in exhibitions of National Fine Arts in Warsaw and received a number of high awards in the field of sculpture. In 1952, he took part in the soviet sponsored exhibition "100 Years of Realism in Poland" (Russian: 100 лет "реализма" в Польше) in Moscow.

On July 22, 1952, by decision of the President of the Republic of Poland, the artist was awarded was awarded the Golden Cross of Merit (Polish: Złoty Krzyż Zasługi) for his works in the field of culture and art.

At the end of the 1950s, inspired by archaic Greek and Etruscan sculptures, Horno-Popławski undertook new formal searches using the expression of natural shapes of "fieldstones", which gave him a high position among the 20th century sculptors.

In 1949, he moved to Sopot then Gdańsk at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he even served in the position of the Dean of the Faculty of Sculpture in 1949-1950 and in 1956–1960. Between 1951 and 1954, Stanisław was the main expert in the reconstruction project of the Old Town of Gdańsk, designing houses and sculptural decorations. He worked more particularly on:

From 1946 to 1949, he was a teacher at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. In 1948, he received the second prize in a competition for the design of a monument to Adam Mickiewicz in Poznań.

Stanisław took part to the Second World War from its beginning in September 1939 and got captured. He spent the rest of the conflict in the POW camp for Polish officers "Oflag II-C" located in Woldenberg (today Dobiegniew, Lubusz Voivodeship). During his detention, he realized several religious statues placed in the camp chapel.

A the end of the war, once released from the POW camp, he worked for a year as a professor at the School of Fine Arts of Białystok. It is in the city that he found back his wife and his children he was separated from since 1939.

The work was created in Toruń in 1938, commissioned by the then Białystok Voivodeship: it is the only profane work of Stanisław Horno-Popławski in the city. In 1945, it was placed over one of the ponds of the "Planty Park".

In 1935, her mother Maria died in Italy. She was buried in the family vault in the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw, together with her husband, who died four years earlier.

In 1931, Horno-Popławski began his teaching career at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Stephen Báthory University in Vilnius, today's part of the Vilnius University. He was a member of several associations:

The original monument dates back to 1927, the first elevated to Sienkiewicz in Poland. It was funded via a Committee composed of teachers and cultural activists of Bydgoszcz, led by Witold Bełza. The initial statue was made out of bronze by the artist Konstanty Laszczka. The official unveiling happened on July 31, 1927, by the President of Poland, Ignacy Mościcki. The statue was destroyed by the Nazis in the first days of the occupation, in September 1939.

In Warsaw, he resumed his education from 1923 to 1931, at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts under the tutoring of Tadeusz Pruszkowski and Tadeusz Breyer. After graduation, he traveled to France and Italy.

In 1908, the family left Georgia for Moscow where the young Stanisław began his art studies in the late 1910s. While visiting museums and galleries in the Russian capital, he was fascinated by painting. In 1921, Stanisław lived briefly in Vilnius, but soon they transferred from Soviet Union to motherland Poland in 1922.

Stanisław Horno-Popławski (1902-1997) was a Russian-Polish painter, sculptor and pedagogue.

In March 1891, she married Bartłomiej Józef Popławski (1861-1931) a Russian-Polish railway engineer (1861-1931) who later became president of the Warsaw Shipping and Trade Society. Bartłomiej had just been transferred the same year to Crimea (then part of the Russian Empire), due to poor health and was involved in the construction of the Feodosia-Dzhankoy railway line (1891-1895). A year later in Feodosia, they had a daughter Maria Yadviga (1892-1930s). Stanisław was born on July 14, 1902, in Kutaisi, Georgia, then part of the Russian Empire.

Stanisław's mother was Maria-Natalie-Agripina Popłavskaya (Russian: Мария-Натали-Агрипина Поплавская), née Czeczott (1869-1935).

During 5 months they hid Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935) feigning mental illness, who has been sent for a medical examination after his arrest in Łódź. Using their official positions, Jan, together with other physicians (Władysław Mazurkiewicz, Aleksander Sulkiewicz and others) helped Piłsudski to escape to Galicia. After this action, Popławski had to leave his post: he then took up a private practice as a physician. Jan enlarged successfully the art collection started by his father. His gathering was focused on Dutch and Flemish painting and the Italian Quattrocento. In 1924, at the personal invitation of Józef Piłsudski, Jan left Leningrad at the age of 65 for Warsaw to attend his seriously ill brother Bartholomew-Joseph, and stayed there. Popławski's collection is today the pride of the National Museum in Warsaw, including, among others, works from Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Tintoretto, Jordaens or Jan Steen. Widowed in 1933, Jan moved to a rented apartment at 16 Chłodna street in Warsaw, where his private medical practice received a large high-ranking clientele, in particular Józef Piłsudski. He died in his flat in 1935.