Stanisław Szukalski

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Stanisław Szukalski (1893-1987) was a Polish-born painter and sculptor, and developer of the pseudoscientific-historical theory of Zermatism.

Szukalski immigrated to the United States in his teens, where he joined the arts scene in Chicago. Ben Hecht, who knew Szukalski in the 1920s, described him in his 1954 autobiography A Child of the Century as starving, muscular, aristocratic and disdainful of lesser beings than himself -- traits Szukalski retained for the rest of his life. In 1934, Szulaski returned to Poland when the government proclaimed him their "Greatest Living Artist" and built the Szukalski National Museum to house his works. In 1939, the Nazi Siege of Warsaw resulted in the destruction of the museum and his life's work. Szukalski moved to Southern California, where he languished in obscurity, supporting himself by drawing maps for an aerospace company.

In 1971, Glen Bray, a publisher who had previously specialized in the work of Mad Magazine artist Basil Wolverton, befriended him and later published one book of Szukalski's art, Inner Portraits (1980), and another of his art and philosophy, Trough Full of Pearls / Behold! The Protong (1982).

Szukalski believed that all human culture derived from post-deluge Easter Island. Zermatism postulated that mankind was locked in an eternal struggle with the "Yetinsyny"', offspring of Yeti and humans, who had enslaved humanity from time immemorial. Szukalski used his considerable artistic talents to illustrate his theories, which, despite their lack of scientific merit, have gained a cult following largely on their aesthetic value -- an irony likely to have infuriated the hyper-curmudgeonly Szukalski. Among Szukalski's admirers are Leonardo DiCaprio, who sponsored a retrospective entitled "Struggle" at the Laguna Art Museum in 2000, the Church of the SubGenius, which incorporates the Yetinsyny elements of Zermatism, and the band Tool, who recommend[1] "any collection of works you can find by this man is well worth the effort".

Following Szukalski's death in 1987, a group of his admirers spread his ashes on Easter Island, in the rock quarry of Rano Raraku.