Tytus Czyżewski (28 December 1880 in Przyszowa – 5 May 1945 in

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

) was a Polish painter, art theoretician,

Futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futures studies or futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes play (theatre), plays, which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between Character (arts), characters and is intended for Theatre, theatrical performance rather than just Readin ...

, member of the Polish Formists and a

Colorist In comics, a colorist is responsible for adding color to black-and-white line art. For most of the 20th century this was done using brushes and dyes which were then used as guides to produce the printing plates. Since the late 20th century it is ...

Biography

In 1902 he studied at the

Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow The Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (, usually abbreviated to ''ASP''), is a public institution of higher education located in the centre of Kraków, Poland. It is the oldest Polish fine art academy, established in 1818 and granted f ...

in the painting studios of

Józef Mehoffer Józef Mehoffer (19 March 1869 – 8 July 1946) was a Polish painter and decorative artist, one of the leading artists of the Young Poland movement and one of the most revered Polish artists of his time. Life Mehoffer was born in Ropczyce ...

and

Leon Wyczółkowski Leon Jan Wyczółkowski (; 11 April 1852 – 27 December 1936) was a Polish painter and educator who was one of the leading painters of the Young Poland movement, as well as the principal representative of Polish Realism (arts), Realism in art of ...

. Czyżewski travelled to

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

and learned from the artistic trends there. He began exhibiting in 1906. Czyżewski painting style was highly influenced by Cézanne and

El Greco Doménikos Theotokópoulos (, ; 1 October 1541 7 April 1614), most widely known as El Greco (; "The Greek"), was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance, regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time. ...

, whose work he admired until his death. In 1917, with the brothers

Zbigniew Zbigniew () is a Polish masculine given name, originally Zbygniew . This West Slavic name is derived from the Polish elements ''Zby-'' (from ''zbyć, zbyć się, or pozbyć się'', meaning "to dispel", "to get rid of") and ''gniew'', meaning "ang ...

and

Andrzej Pronaszko Andrzej Pronaszko (31 December 1888 in Derebchyn - 15 January 1961 in Warsaw) was a Polish painter and scenographer, one of the most prominent representatives of the Young Poland movement and the Polish avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, Zbigni ...

, he organized in Kraków an exhibition of Polish Expressionist works. The group later became known as the ''Polish Formists''. Until the break-up of the Formists in 1922, he was the primary artist and theoretician behind the movement as well as the joint editor of the periodical ''Formiści''. He was also co-founder of the Polish Futurist clubs, and published Futurist-inspired "visual poetry." Czyżewski brief flirted with

Surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

and spent the rest of his life as a Colorist.

Selected work

*Poetry: **''Zielone Oko. Poezje formistyczne. Elektryczne wizje'', 1920 **''Noc – dzień. Mechaniczny instynkt elektryczny'', 1922 **''Pastorałki'', 1925 **''Robespierre. Rapsod. Cinema. Od romantyzmu do cynizmu'', 1927 **''Lajkonik w chmurach'', 1936 *Prose: **''A Burglar of the Better Sort: Plays, Verse, Theoretical Notes''. Translated by Charles Kraszewski. Publisher: Glagoslav Publication, 2019.

References

Czyżewski Biography

Profile of Tytus Czyżewski
a
Culture.pl
* Artola, Inés R. (2015), ''Formiści: la síntesis de la modernidad (1917 – 1922). Conexiones y protagonistas'', Granada: Libargo,

External links

ArtNet: More works by Czyżewski.
Polish male dramatists and playwrights Futurologists 20th-century Polish painters 20th-century Polish male artists 1880 births 1945 deaths 20th-century Polish poets 20th-century Polish dramatists and playwrights Polish male poets 20th-century Polish male writers People from Limanowa County Polish male painters {{Poland-painter-stub