Jan Cybis

Jan Cybis

Was born in 1897 and died in 1972. Cybis began to study law soon after World War I but abandoned these studies in 1919 in favor of enrolling at the Academy of Art and the Arts Industry in Wroclaw; Otto Mueller, a former member of the DIE BRUECKE group of Expressionists, guided Cybis through his studies in art until 1921. Cybis perfected his skills as a painter between 1921 and 1924 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, where he was a student of Jozef Mehoffer, Ignacy Pienkowski, and Jozef Pankiewicz. In 1923 he became a member of the group of Pankiewicz's students who founded the KOMITET PARYSKI / PARIS COMMITTEE. The following year he traveled to Paris with Seweryn Boraczok, Jozef Czapski, Jozef Jarema, Artur Nacht-Samborski, Tadeusz Potworowski, Hanna Rudzka, Zygmunt Waliszewski, Janina Przeclawska-Strzalecka, Janusz Strzalecki, and Marian Szczyrbula, where the group enrolled in the branch of the Krakow Academy founded by Pankiewicz in that city. Cybis participated in the first exhibition of the Capists at the Galerie Zak (1930) in Paris and in the subsequent presentation of their paintings at the Galerie Moos in Geneva (1931). Cybis had his first solo exhibition in 1932 at the Friends of the Fine Arts Society in Krakow. The artist also presented his works at the Salons of the Institute of Art Propaganda in Warsaw and the Association of Polish Visual Artists in Krakow. He represented Poland at the Venice Art Biennale in 1934 and at the exhibition mounted by the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1938. In 1937 he became editor-in-chief of the "Artists' Voice", a periodical that by this time had become the official publication of the Capists and Colorists. In 1948 he was appointed a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. During the Socialist Realist period he was prevented from teaching for ideological reasons; throughout this time Cybis was a curator at the National Museum in Warsaw. Between 1955 and 1957 he lectured at the State Higher School of the Visual Arts in Sopot and was subsequently reinstated at the Academy in Warsaw in 1957. Cybis showed his works during solo exhibitions at Warsaw's Zacheta Gallery (1956) and at the National Museum (1965). He participated in numerous presentations of Polish art abroad, in Venice (Biennale, 1948), São Paulo (5th International Art Biennale, 1959), Alexandria (Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), Brussels (Palace of Fine Arts, 1959), Stockholm (Royal Academy of Art, 1959), Paris (Musée National d'Art Moderne, 1961), Oslo (National Gallery, 1961), Essen (Folkwang Museum, 1962), Nancy (Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1967), Edinburgh (Scottish National Gallery of Contemporary Art, 1969), Chicago (1969), Washington, D.C. (1969), and New York (1969). A comprehensive retrospective of Cybis's works was held at the Zacheta National Contemporary Art Gallery at the turn of 1997 and 1998.