Stanisław Szukalski (13 December 1893 – 19 May 1987) was a Polish sculptor and painter who became a part of the Chicago Renaissance. Szukalski's art appears to show influences from ancient cultures, Egypt, Slavs, and Aztecs combined with elements of art nouveau and other currents of early 20th century European modernism: cubism, expressionism, and futurism. During the 1920s, he was hailed as Poland's "greatest living artist". His art was dubbed "Bent Classicism".

He developed a pseudoscientific-historical theory of Zermatism<!--redirected-->, positing that all human culture was derived from post-deluge Easter Island and that humankind was locked in an eternal struggle with the Sons of Yeti ("Yetinsyny"), the offspring of Yeti and humans.

Life

Between Poland and Chicago

left|thumb|328x328px|Tooker Alley on map of 2 March 1921 in Chicago with "Szukalski" studio location across from the "[[Dil Pickle Club|Dill Pickle Club House and Chapel"]]

Szukalski was born in Warta, Congress Poland and was raised in Gidle. He arrived at New York with his mother, Konstancja, and sister, Alfreda, on 27 June 1907; they then went to Chicago to join his father, Dyonizy Szukalski, a blacksmith. A child prodigy in sculpture, he enrolled at age 13 at the Art Institute of Chicago. A year later, Sculptor Antoni Popiel persuaded Szukalski's&nbsp;parents to send him back to Poland,

Back in the U.S., Szukalski joined the arts scene in Chicago, He had two solo exhibitions at the Art Institute, in 1916 and 1917, as well as one at the progressive Arts Club in 1919; he also exhibited regularly in the juried annuals at the Art Institute. In 1922, he married Helen Walker, the artist daughter of Dr. Samuel J. Walker, a prominent member of Chicago society.

Mickiewicz monument in Vilnius

The first design proposed for a monument of Adam Mickiewicz (a Polish poet, dramatist and political activist) to be built in the city of Vilnius, was promoted by Zbigniew Pronaszko of Vilnius University (then, Stefan Batory University in the Second Polish Republic). However, in May 1925, a contest was declared for the design of the monument. The polarized atmosphere led the monument committee to arrange for a new contest, this time limited to concepts by artists who were invited to participate.

After traveling in Europe from 1926 to 1928, Szukalski went to Kraków, Poland, where he had a retrospective exhibition in 1929. In 1932, he and Helen divorced.

Ben Hecht, who had met Szukalski in 1914, described Szukalski in his 1954 autobiography, A Child of the Century, "For twenty years my friend ... experienced disasters which would have killed off a dozen businessmen. Sickness, poverty and hunger nipped everlasting at his heels. ... during his struggles he heard only the catcalls of critics and the voices of derision. Yet when I saw him in 1934, I saw a man who had feasted on power and whose eyes smiled with triumph."

In September 1934, in Hollywood, Szukalski married Joan Lee Donovan (b. 1910), who had been his daughter's kindergarten teacher in Chicago.

Return to Poland

In 1936,<!-- The year is in question; Hecht, A Child of the Century, 1954, says (p. 241) that the year was 1934. --> Szukalski returned to Poland, supported financially by the Minister of the Treasury. He completed several sculptures, most notably the monument of Bolesław Chrobry, and decorated the façade of the Silesian Museum in Katowice, as well as a local government building in that city. The government gave him a studio, the largest in Warsaw, and proclaimed it the Szukalski National Museum. The two eventually escaped from Poland and were able to make their way back to the United States.

Szukalski had come to Poland with all his unsold works, encouraged by the prospect of building a museum devoted to his art; None of these projects went much further than Szukalski's immediate friends.

In 1971, Glenn Bray, a publisher who had previously specialized in the work of Mad Magazine artist Basil Wolverton, befriended Szukalski, and introduced many of his friends to Szukalski. Bray published a book of Szukalski's art and philosophy, A Trough Full of Pearls / Behold! The Protong, in 1980, and a second volume of his art, Inner Portraits, in 1982. Those books led others, including George DiCaprio, Leonardo DiCaprio's father, to contact Szukalski; Di Caprio immediately became a close friend of Szukalski and his wife.

Among Szukalski's admirers are Leonardo DiCaprio, who sponsored a retrospective exhibition entitled "Struggle" at the Laguna Art Museum in 2000; Rick Griffin, Richard Sharpe Shaver, Robert Williams, H. R. Giger, the band Tool, and Ernst Fuchs, who said "Szukalski was the Michelangelo of the 20th century. And probably also of an age to come."

In 2018, Leonardo DiCaprio produced a documentary entitled Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski,

References

Further reading

  • Gambon, Blanche. "Stanislaw Szukalski: Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Philosopher." The New American: A Monthly Digest of Polish-American Life and Culture, Chicago, September, 1935; Vol II, No. 10
  • Szukalski.com – official website (English)
  • Polishness as Religion: The Mystical Delirium of a Nationalist Artist by Mikołaj Gliński at Culture.pl
  • Stanislav Szukalski: Reminiscences, Mukul Dey Archives