Gustaw Gwozdecki
1880–1935 · Polish painter, an early modernist and expressionist
Gustaw Gwozdecki (Warsaw, 1880 - Paris, 1935) was a Polish painter, sculptor and printmaker, regarded as one of Poland's first modernists and expressionists. He trained in Munich, Kraków and Warsaw, and from 1902 studied sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the city where he spent most of his life.
A member of the Polish avant-garde group Formiści, he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in 1904 and later at the Salon des Indépendants. After 1910 his work moved toward Fauvism and attracted favourable attention from French critics, helped by his friend Guillaume Apollinaire. From 1917 to 1927 he lived in New York, where he took part in the annual Salons and promoted Polish art. He painted mainly landscapes, portraits, nudes and still lifes, and made sculptures in marble and gypsum.
His work is held in Polish museums and in private collections in France and the United States.