The early years of Bolesław Biegas’s career

Bolesław Biegalski – he changed his surname to Biegas so that it would better suit his legend – was born on 29 March 1877 in Koziczyn (a village between Ciechanów and Przasnysz) into a peasant family. As a child, he tended cattle, carving shepherd’s crooks and moulding figurines from clay. Orphaned at an early age, he went to live with his sister. He learnt the trade of carpentry and the basics of sculpture from her husband. Then the story unfolded like a fairy tale. The local parish priest, Father Aleksander Rzewnicki, noticed the carved figurines and organised a fundraising campaign to fund the teenager’s education in Warsaw.

Biegas ended up with a woodcarver who treated him badly, so after a few months he ran away to Koziczyn. This time, Father Rzewnicki asked a local patron of the arts, the doctor Franciszek Rajkowski, for help in looking after this natural talent. Thanks to him, the eighteen-year-old began attending school and was also able to carve to his heart’s content. He soon met Aleksander Świętochowski, a Positivist journalist, critic and social activist, who was yet another admirer of his innate talent. It was Świętochowski who suggested that the young man change his surname to Biegas, so that he could be promoted more effectively as a genuine artist of the people.

In 1896, the critic organised Biegas’s first solo exhibition of sculptures in Warsaw. He published several articles about the young artist and organised a social initiative: a fundraising campaign to support the education of the talented self-taught sculptor. The campaign was supported by several Warsaw newspapers, which published articles and reproductions of the sculptures following the exhibition. The funds raised enabled the 20-year-old Bolesław Biegas to begin his studies at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków in 1897. He studied diligently, winning prizes and honours. However, when Konstanty Laszczka took over as head of the sculpture department, the student’s individualism clashed with the authoritarianism of the respected professor.

Bolesław Biegas – a recognised artist of the Vienna Secession

The turn of the century brought Symbolism, Art Nouveau and Decadentism to art and literature; Kraków at that time was teeming with these movements, which found an echo in the young artist’s work.

Biegas abandoned genre themes and naturalism in favour of metaphysics and aesthetics in the tradition of Stanisław Przybyszewski. In 1901, he created *The Book of Life*, a sculpture so far removed from the principles of academic art that, amidst a scandal, he was expelled from the academy as a ‘subverter’ of order and rules. Paradoxically, at the same time he took part in the prestigious 10th Secession Exhibition in Vienna, where he received excellent reviews. He was the second Polish sculptor to become a member of the famous Austrian Secession Society of Fine Arts; the first was Wacław Szymanowski (1859–1930). Biegas’s sculptures were exhibited not only in Vienna but also at the Glass Palace in Munich (German: Glaspalast).

Another stroke of good fortune came in the form of a scholarship from the Warsaw Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts to continue his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where Biegas set off in 1901. Despite this, he never actually enrolled at the Paris academy. To enjoy complete creative freedom, he rented a studio and threw himself into his work. The artistic circles of Paris loved and appreciated him. André Salmon, a renowned art critic and poet, and a friend of Apollinaire and Picasso, wrote approvingly that the bust ‘God’, exhibited at the La Plume salon, caused a sensation, and that Biegas had surpassed all the sculptors of his time.

Montparnasse and the work of Bolesław Biegas

In April 1902, at the annual Salon National des Beaux-Arts, the artist exhibited ‘Portrait of Boznańska’, which brought him fame and recognition. Soon afterwards, Boznańska painted a portrait of Biegas; they were bound by a warm friendship as neighbours in Paris’s Montparnasse.

The theme of the artist’s sculptural works became the translation of abstract and metaphysical concepts into an artistic language. Biegas was able to give form to fleeting sensations and experiences, and to harness the elements within the enduring material of sculpture. He gave his works existential, symbolic titles.

Through his synthesis of form, expression and the geometrisation of figures, he was ahead of the artistic explorations of his contemporaries. At the beginning of the 20th century, he was at the height of his powers – creating, exhibiting and enjoying success. In his private life, he befriended influential patrons – the wealthy baron and baroness Henryk and Jadwiga Trütschel, who treated him like a son and made him their heir.

‘The Poor Man’s Nostalgia’ – a sculpture by Biegas at the Musée d’Orsay

And Biegas knew both longing and poverty from personal experience. The events of his childhood, his experience of extreme poverty and the loss of his parents left an indelible mark on the artist’s sensitive soul. Years later, he wrote in his diary:

‘I was already living solely on the impression of memories of those dreadful days, which had turned peace and happiness into a chaos of troubles and terrible misery.’

The sculpture ‘The Poor Man’s Nostalgia’ (La Nostalgie du pauvre), on display at the Musée d’Orsay, combines an expressionist depiction of the figure with a linear rendering of the titular nostalgia. Captured in a synthetic manner, this Nostalgia seems to flow down in fine lines of relief towards the more spatially rendered lower part of the statue, accumulating an enormous emotional charge in the fragmentarily depicted figure. We can almost hear her moving experiences.

It was precisely for these innovative and daring formal solutions, as well as his original sculptural techniques, that Biegas gained fame in the artistic capital of France.

Other works by Bolesław Biegas at the Musée d’Orsay

The Musée d’Orsay’s collection also includes two other works by the artist from the early 20th century. In a similar manner to *Nostalgia of the Poor*, contrasting the three-dimensional form with a linear, flat perspective, he created the bust *The Sphinx*. The figure’s protruding forehead and unusually sunken cheeks tower over its shoulders and hands, which are rendered in low relief.

Another work on display at the Musée d’Orsay is a linen, embroidered wall panel, dating from his time spent at the baron’s estate in Masłówka, 50 km from Kyiv. Between 1902 and 1907, the artist spent an average of half a year at a time in Ukraine, sculpting, painting and designing tapestries which were subsequently woven by local peasant women.

The artist also explored musical and literary themes. He gave tangible form to the elusive concepts of creative genius and inspiration, creating statues of Wagner, Bach, Beethoven and Adam Mickiewicz, and sculpting the musical genius of Fryderyk Chopin no fewer than five times.

Bolesław Biegas as a painter

Biegas began painting whilst still in Kraków. In his paintings, he depicted dreamlike visions of mysterious worlds (the ‘Mysticism of Infinity’ series), and also commented on the current political situation, as in ‘The Russo-Japanese War’ (1907). The painting caused a scandal, as a result of which it was removed from an ongoing exhibition in the presence of the police.

In 1909, the artist caused another scandal, this time of a moral nature, when he became involved with the Indian princess Perinette Khurshedbanoo, whom we can see today in many of his paintings.

After the First World War, Biegas fully established himself as a painter and continued his artistic explorations. He produced a series of stylised portraits of famous figures set within geometric, abstract variations on circles, described by critics as ‘spherical portraits’.

Bolesław Biegas in Paris towards the end of his life

Despite having enjoyed a great deal of good fortune in life, Bolesław Biegas’s star began to fade from the 1930s onwards. He lived alone in modest circumstances. Towards the end of his life, he became close to the circle of Polish émigrés centred around the Historical and Literary Society in Paris, to which he bequeathed his estate and artistic legacy, specifying that his works should be handed over to the Polish nation.

The artist died on 30 September 1954 and was buried in the cemetery at Montmorency, near Paris (known as the ‘Pantheon of Polish emigration’). Today, the Bolesław Biegas Museum is housed in the building of the Polish Library in Paris, the former headquarters of the Historical and Literary Society. Since 2015, the artist’s works have also been on display in Warsaw at the Bolesław Biegas Museum.