Artur Nacht-Samborski, HEAD OF THE MAN

22.5 x 18.5cm - gouache, watercolor, paper

in p.d. corner visible fragment of oval red stamp with inscription: NACHT | SAMBORSKI, above inscription: DEP/AN 793 (deposit number of the collection of Aniela Nacht-Lempicka deposited at the National Museum in Warsaw in the mid-1970s, later withdrawn. 1970s, later withdrawn)
On the reverse a sketch of the composition (watercolor, marker).


Painting exhibited, mentioned and reproduced in, among others:: Painting exhibited, reproduced and described:
- Don't Ask About Poland. From the collection of Katarzyna Szafrańska and Wojciech Szafrański, edited by M. Smolińska, CCA "Znaki Czasu", Toruń 21 II - 25 V 2025, p. 163.
♣ Droit de suite: ♣ An additional fee will be added to the Purchase Price based on the right of the creator and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Law of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite).

Artur Nacht-Samborski (Krakow 1898 - Warsaw 1974) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow in 1917-20 under Wojciech Weiss. In 1920 he left with Jankiel Adler for Berlin and remained there until 1923. In Berlin he met Malgorzata and Stanislaw Kubicki, artists associated with the Poznan group Bunt, and through them the German Expressionist and Dadaist milieu. After returning to Cracow, he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in the studio of Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski for a year (1923/24). In September 1924, together with his colleagues forming the so-called Paris Committee, he left for further studies under Jozef Pankiewicz in Paris. He remained abroad until 1939, taking part in Kapist exhibitions in Paris (1930), Geneva and Warsaw (1931) and others. He visited Poland several times during this period and maintained contacts with the art community in the country. He returned to Cracow at the beginning of 1939. After the outbreak of war, he fled to Lviv, where, after the Russians occupied the city, he shared the fate of the Polish artistic colony (among other things, he earned money by making propaganda "rubbings"). After the Nazis entered, he avoided confinement in the ghetto, taking the name Stefan Samborski. In 1942, with the help of friends, he left for Warsaw, where he hid until the end of the occupation. After the war, he joined the organization of artistic life as an activist of ZPAP. He was also appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk (based in Sopot), where he taught from 1947 to 1949. In 1949-69 he was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, running one of the best painting studios in the history of the academy. His works only in the early years betrayed the influence of the French Post-Impressionists, mainly Cézanne and Bonnard, as well as the Fauvists (Matisse, Derain) and German Expressionists. By the 1920s he had already achieved an individual artistic language, operating with simplified, synthetic forms, sometimes emphasized by contours. His paintings, especially from the post-war years, are characterized by a narrowed color range and operate with an essentially small repertoire of motifs (still lifes with ficus, nudes, rarely portraits). Despite these modest means, his painting is one of the greatest phenomena in Polish art.