Xawery Dunikowski

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Xawery Dunikowski (December 24, 1875 - January 26, 1964) was a Polish sculptor and artist, notable for surviving Auschwitz concentration camp, and best known for his Neo-Romantic sculptures and Auschwitz-inspired art.

Dunikowski was born in Kraków, a city he had an affinity for and would also use as the basis for a collection of art. When he was twelve his family moved to Warsaw, and after finishing his education in a technical school he studied sculpture under Boleslaw Syrewicz and Leon Wasilkowski. At twenty one, Dunikowski moved back to Kraków to study sculpture at the School of Fine Arts under Alfred Daun. In Kraków he also studied painting under Jan Stanislawski and after being enrolled for three years graduated with honors.

In 1902 Dunikowski began teaching sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, a professorship he would hold until 1909 when he was appointed to Chair for Sculpture at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts. Heading to Paris before the beginning of World War I, Dunikowski remained from 1914-1920 until he returned to Kraków in 1921 to take the position as head of faculty of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts. Dunikowski didn't leave Kraków until 1940 when he was arrested by the Gestapo.

Dunikowski was arrested on May 15, 1940 and deported to Auschwitz on June 26, 1940, where he survived until Soviet liberation. In Auschwitz he was assigned the number 774. The detainment interrupted his series of sculpture titled Heads from the Krakow Palace, based on busts found on the ceilings of Renaissance castles. Auschwitz had demoralized the artist to a point where he said that he had died there, and refused all requests to make any art during his imprisonment, mainly by SS guards that urged him to make a model of the camp. Already growing old by 1942, Dunikowski became sick and was selected to be killed until his name was crossed off a list to be gassed by a fellow Pole. Narrowly escaping death, he once again nearly met his fate in September 1943 when he was accused of belonging to the resistance movement within Auschwitz and was sentenced to be shot. However, due to further illness he was sent back to the hospital and had his sentence reduced. By 1944, still recovering in the hospital, he began to draw other prisoners. Each drawing had to be smuggled out and the ones that made it were sent back to Krakow. Dunikowski had still not completely recovered by January 27, 1945, when the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, but by 1946 returned to his position in Kraków. He also resumed Heads from the Kraków Palace after the war.

By the time he had returned to his normal life and recovered from his illness, Dunikowski was seventy years old and had started to create larger art to coincide with many of his Auschwitz themed drawings and sculptures. His postwar interests started to drift toward architecture and tying it further into sculpture, and public monuments, most notably the Monument to the Liberation of the Region of Warmia and Mazury, and the Revolutionary Effort, located in Olszytn and at St. Anna. Dunikowski also lived to see his works on display in his hometown of Kraków, exhibitions in Warsaw, and further exhibitions that reached all the way to Moscow and Venice by the early to mid 1950s. In 1955, Dunikowski had a documentary themed around his workshop titled Idę do słońca (I am Going to the Sun), but took little interest in the film itself or the director, Andrzej Wajda. Featured in the documentary was another famous sculpture series by Dunikowski, Brzemienne Kobięty (Pregnant Women).

In the same year Dunikowski became a professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, leaving Kraków permanently, and also held a professorship at the State Higher School of Visual Arts in Wrocław.

In 1964, at the age of ninety, Xawery Dunikowski died, leaving behind a legacy of art including some of his more famous sculptures, Macierzynstwo (Motherhood), Skupienie (Concentration), Fatum (Fate), Dante, sculpture series including the Women of Nieborow and the Jesuits' Circle, along with many illustrations, portraits, and other works. Considered to be the best 20th century Polish sculptor, Dunikowski is buried in the Alley of the Meritorious in Powazki Cemetery, Warsaw.