Stefan RASSALSKI (1910-1972), Mermaid Monument

woodcut hand-colored in watercolor, paper; 31 x 21 cm (clear passe-partout);
Signed in pencil l. d.: StRassalski;
Inscribed p. d.: Mermaid Monument.
Stefan Rassalski, a.k.a. "Ster" - Polish photographer, graphic artist, painter, poet, journalist, Home Army soldier, author of numerous photographs and articles devoted to the wartime destruction of Warsaw and the postwar reconstruction of the city. Being heavily influenced by Kulisiewicz and Skoczylas, his main technique was woodcut. During the war he was active in the underground under the pseudonym "Ster." He co-organized a secret photographic laboratory in the basement of the Physics Department of the Warsaw University of Technology. There he made microfilms of theoretical papers of Polish scientists so that they could be more easily hidden from the Germans. He worked at making false identity documents for the underground, and took documentation of German crimes on the streets of Warsaw and portraits of Gestapo men for the underground with telephoto lenses. During the Warsaw Uprising, Rassalski stayed in the area of the Polytechnic, where he took the first photo at W hour, showing the gathering of a group of insurgents from several incomplete units in the gardens of the university. He did not join the Polish United Workers' Party, but avoided repression because of his wartime underground activities.