Franciszek Starowieyski, Departure of the Soul, 2008.

Serigraph on paper, numbered l.d. "55/79" and signed on the middle d. "FStarowieyski".

Dimensions in frame: 71x101 cm

Franciszek Andrzej Bobola Starowieyski, alias Jan Byk (Bratkówka 1930 - 2009 Warsaw) - Polish graphic artist, painter, illustrator and stage designer. He came from a noble family, sealing with the Biberstein coat of arms. From 1949 to 1952 he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under Wojciech Weiss and Adam Marczyński, and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw under Michał Bylina, where he received his diploma in 1955. He became popular in the 1960s with a series of theater and film posters. He was involved in painting, posters, applied graphics, theater and television set design. He was the creator of the so-called theater of drawing. His paintings were characterized by his fascination with the Rubensian female body, sensuality and reflection on transience and death. He has exhibited many times in galleries and museums in Poland, as well as Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Canada, Switzerland, the USA, Italy and others. He was the recipient of many awards, including: Grand Prix at the Saô Paulo Biennale of Contemporary Art (1973), Grand Prix for film poster at the Cannes Film Festival (1974), Grand Prix at the Paris International Festival (1975), Annual Key Award of the Hollywood Reporter newspaper (1975-1976), awards at the International Poster Biennale in Warsaw and the Chicago International Film Festival (1979-1982). In his "theaters of drawing," he combined the two arts into one, a "spectacle of all arts," a media phenomenon in which the very act of creation, its spectacular and - thanks to the author's erudition - literary elements, as well as the work itself in the traditional sense, are of equal artistic value. In Starowieyski's paintings, the real world merged with the creations of his almost "unbridled" imagination, and his work ostentatiously referred to the old 17th-century masters and was imbued with grotesque and humor. The painting Divina Polonia Rapta Per Europa Profana, which means "Divine Poland Kidnapped by Secular Europe," exhibited at the Polish representation in the European Union in Brussels (1998), caused many controversial assessments. In 1994, he received the "Golden Mask" Award for his set design for Krzysztof Penderecki's comedy-drama Ubu the King or the Poles at the Grand Theater in Lodz, and in 2004 he received the Minister of Culture's Award in Visual Arts. In 2005 he was awarded the Gold Medal "Meritorious to Culture Gloria Artis" by the Minister of Culture Waldemar Dabrowski.