Slawomir Mieleszko (1938-2021), Hasid in shtrajmel, 1997
Oil on canvas, 72.5 x 62.5 cm (frame) / 59 x 48.5 cm
Signed and dated in the lower left corner.
Artist's details on the reverse.
The painting comes from the collection of the artist's heirs.
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Slawomir Andrzej Mieleszko - sculptor, painter, university lecturer. He was born on April 30, 1938 in the town of Novy Swierzhenie, Novogrudok province (today's Belarus). He came from a family with an exceptionally long and glorious history, dating back to before the founding of the Jagiellonian dynasty: one of his ancestors, John Mieleszko, was a direct descendant of Gediminas, and was in the post going with the matchmakers from Jagiello to Jadwiga. Further fate of the family was invariably connected with Polish history.
In 1939, the artist's parents, threatened with deportation, managed to escape from the approaching Soviet army: warned by railroad workers, they left on the last transport in the direction of Warsaw. They settled in a forester's lodge near Zambrow, where they hid a Jewish family.
In 1946, the family settled near Lublin. In 1957 Slawomir Mieleszko began his studies at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Poznan, at the Department of Sculpture. He received his diploma in the studio of Professor Basil Wojtowicz in 1963.
After graduation, the artist settled first in Świdnik, then in Lublin. In 1975 he took a job at the Institute of Artistic Education of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, of which he was co-founder and later director for many years. He worked at the university until the 2000s, as a professor in the Department of Monumental Sculpture.
Prof. Slawomir Mieleszko is the author of several hundred sculptures, including outdoor sculptures and monumental monuments commemorating events in Polish history. These include: Tyszowce Confederation Monument (Tyszowce, 1964), Partisans Monument (Tomaszów Lubelski, 1966), Children of Zamojszczyzna Monument (Lublin, 1969), Victory Monument (Radzyń Podlaski, 1970), Monument "To the Glory of the Polish Soldier" (Świdnik, 1975), Monument to the Martyrdom of Lublin Jews ( Lublin, 1985), Monument to Tadeusz Kosciuszko (Chelm, 1982).
In the 1990s, the artist also turned to painting. His works are dominated on the one hand by idyllic landscapes, referring to the tradition of Polish painting of the 19th and 20th centuries, and on the other by Jewish portraits. Their genesis can be traced back to the family's wartime history - perhaps Slawomir, who was a few years old at the time, retained vague memories of the war period, when the family risked their lives giving shelter to Jews. Undoubtedly, stories from that time were repeated many times in the family circle, especially since after the war the artist's mother wanted to be awarded the Righteous Among the Nations medal - but she refused to accept it, arguing that she didn't help for awards, but out of a spur of the heart and a sense of decency. What's more, the family lived in Lublin - a city with a very significant Jewish community before the war. After the war, therefore, a void remained, filled only by the ghostly neighborhood of the site of the former Majdanek concentration camp.
The anonymous portraits of Hasidic Jews, devoid of any anecdotal elements, as if hanging in the void, are perhaps a gallery of these non-existent people who inhabited Lublin before the war. On the other hand, the dark portraits of tragic figures - a weeping child, a woman in rags, a girl with sunken cheeks - allude without a shadow of a doubt to wartime dramas. War themes, moreover, form a bridge between the artist's paintings and his sculptural work. They can be found not only in monumental monuments, but also in smaller forms, such as the bronze reliefs presented at the auction (No. 29 War and No. 30 Children of the Warsaw Ghetto).
Slawomir Mieleszko has presented his works at several dozen solo exhibitions and many group exhibitions. He was the winner of numerous prizes and awards in sculpture competitions. He has also been awarded numerous prizes and honors, including the Prize of the Minister of Culture and Art for lifetime achievement, the Knight's Cross of the Order of Rebirth of Poland, and the medal of the Minister of National Education. Slawomir Mieleszko died on May 13, 2021 in Warsaw.
