Maciej Masłowski

Maciej Masłowski and his wife Halina, during their visit to Girdwoyń family in Troki near Wilno, ca 1935

Maciej Masłowski (January 24, 1901 – August 17, 1976) was a Polish art historian.

Biography

Masłowski was born in Warsaw. He was a son of a painter Stanisław Masłowski (1853–1926) and piano teacher Aniela Ponikowski (1864–1940). After graduating from (Mickiewicz-Konopczyński School) in Warsaw, he studied at University of Warsaw, first history, and then art history. (His teacher was Zygmunt Batowski.)

In 1931-1939 he worked in the Department of Fine Arts of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education (Polish abbr.: WRiOP) and at the same time as the manager of Mobile Art Exhibition and organizer of the Summer Institutes of Folk Arts at Żabie on Hucul region — 1938 and in Zakopane on Podhale region — 1939. Since 1937, he was a delegate of the Polish Minister of Religious Affairs and Public Education to the Interministerial Committee on Folk Industry and Folk Art.

In 1939-1945 he was artistic and scientific advisor to Society for the Protection of Folk Art in Warsaw. Between 1945-1946 he collaborated with the Polish National Institute of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In 1947-1949 he was a professor of College of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and in 1948-1949 - the chief of the Institute of the Dissemination of Fine Arts in Warsaw, later transformed into the Central Bureau of Artistic Exhibitions, and then into the Zachęta National Gallery of Art. In 1948, he has been Polish Division Commissioner for the Biennale in Venice, and then, in 1949 - the manager of the Polish Museum in Rapperswil in Switzerland. In the same year he was also commissioner of Polish Painting Retrospective Exhibition in Prague in Czechoslovakia. Between 1950-1951 he was research professor in the National Institute of Art in Warsaw (later transformed into the Art Institute of Polish Academy of Sciences).

During the communism oppression era - from 1951 - he gave up a regular job, which has not afterwards returned. Trying to survive, he undertook various commercial activities and cultivated research and literary work at home in Podkowa Leśna (where he lived permanently from 1945 until his death in 1976 in Wysokie Mazowieckie).

From 1933 he was married to Halina Klisiński. He had two children (Christine, born 1940 married Kahl, and Andrew, born 1937). He was buried in Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw ("Stare Powązki" - Old Powązki Cemetery) in the family tomb (section 11-1-7/8).

Major works

References