A career and biography worthy of a film script. Bolesław Biegas - a self-made sculpting talent, illiterate shepherd boy and orphan, but also a "child of fortune" and a scandalist. He entered the arena of art, and immediately the art with a capital "S". Little known at home, adored in Paris. An extraordinarily gifted individualist, he was regarded as a precursor of several art movements: sculptor, painter, author of dramas, poems and novels.

The beginnings of the work of Bolesław Biegas
Bolesław Biegalski, because he changed his surname to Biegas to better fit his legend, was born on March 29, 1877 in Koziczyn (a village between Ciechanów and Przasnysz), into a peasant family. As a child, he herded cattle, carving shepherd's sticks and sticking clay figures. Orphaned at an early age, Bolek went to live with his sister. He learned carpentry skills from her husband and sculpted. Then the story unfolded like in a fairy tale. The carved figures were spotted by the local parish priest, Father Aleksander Rzewnicki, and he organised a collection to raise money for the teenager's education in Warsaw. He ended up with a woodcarver who treated him badly, so Biegas fled to Koziczyn after a few months. This time, Fr Rzewnicki asked for help from a local patron of the arts, a doctor, Franciszek Rajkowski. Thanks to him, the 18-year-old started school and was also able to sculpt freely. He soon met the positivist publicist, critic and social activist, Aleksander Świętochowski, another enthusiast of his natural talent. It was Świętochowski who suggested to the young man that he change his name to Biegas in order to promote him more effectively as an authentic artist from 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 initiated a social action: a fundraising campaign to educate the talented self-taught sculptor. The campaign was supported by several Warsaw magazines, which, after the exhibition, published articles and reproductions of the sculptures. The funds raised allowed that in 1897. 20-year-old Bolesław Biegas began his studies at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków. He studied diligently and won prizes and awards. However, when Konstanty Laszczka took over the chair of sculpture, the student's individualism clashed with the authoritarianism of the respected professor.

Bolesław Biegas - acknowledged creator of the Viennese Secession
The end of the century brought symbolism, secession, and decadence in art and literature, from which Kraków was also boiling at the time and which significantly influenced the young artist's work.

Biegas abandoned genre themes and naturalism for metaphysics and aesthetics under the sign of Stanisław Przybyszewski. In 1901, he created The Book of Life, a sculpture so far from the principles of academism that he was expelled from the academy in an atmosphere of scandal, as a "disruptor" of order and principles. 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 Fine Arts Association of the Austrian Secession; the first was Wacław Szymanowski (1859-1930). Biegas's sculptures were exhibited not only in Vienna, but also at the Glaspalast in Munich.

Another stroke of fate was a scholarship from the Warsaw Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts for further education at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, to which he left in 1901, but he never took up studies at the Paris academy. To have complete creative freedom, he rented a studio and threw himself into his work. Artistic Paris loved and appreciated him. André Salmon, a well-known art critic and poet, friend of Apollinaire and Picasso, wrote with appreciation that the bust of "God" exhibited in the salon La Plume caused a sensation and Biegas surpassed all 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', with which he again gained fame and recognition. Boznanska soon painted a portrait of Biegas; they shared a cordial relationship as neighbours in Paris' Montparnasse.

The transformation of abstract and metaphysical concepts into the language of sculpture became the theme of the artist's work. He was able to mould ephemeral feelings, experiences, subdue the elements, and gave them existential, symbolic titles in permanent sculptural matter.

With his synthesis of form, expression and geometrisation of figures, he was ahead of the artistic pursuits of artists of his era. At the beginning of the 20th century, he was in top form, creating, exhibiting and succeeding. Privately, he became involved with wealthy patrons - the wealthy baronosts Henrik and Jadwiga Trütschel, who treated him like a son and made him their heir.

Poor man's nostalgia - Biegas's sculpture at the Musée d'Orsay
And longing and poverty Biegas knew from autopsy. The events of his childhood, the experience of extreme poverty and the loss of his parents left a mark on the artist's sensitive soul. Years later he wrote in his diary: "I was already living only the impression of the memories of those terrible days, which turned peace and happiness into a chaos of troubles and terrible misery".

The sculpture Poor Man's Nostalgia (La Nostalgie du pauvre), on display at the Musée d'Orsay, combines an expressionist representation of the figure with a linearly treated depiction of the titular nostalgia. Synthetically framed, Nostalgie seems to flow down the fine lines of the relief onto the more spatially treated lower part of the statue, accumulating a huge charge of emotion in the fragmentarily framed figure. We can almost hear her moving experience.

It was for his innovative and bold formal solutions and original sculptural techniques that Biegas gained fame in the artistic capital of France.

Other works by Bolesław Biegas at the Musée d'Orsay
The collection of the Musée d'Orsay contains two other realisations by the artist from the early 20th century. He depicted the bust of the 'Sphinx', which he had made slightly earlier, in a similar way to 'Nostalgia of a Poor Man', contrasting a three-dimensional figure with a linear, flat shot. The convex forehead and unusually concave cheeks dominate the figure's arms and hands, developed in low relief.

Another work on display at the Musée d'Orsay is a linen embroidered wall panel, from a holiday at the baronial estate in Maslowka, 50 km from Kiev. Between 1902 and 1907, the artist spent six months at a time in Ukraine, sculpting, painting and designing tapestries later made by local peasant women.

The artist also took up musical and literary themes. He conjured into matter elusive notions of creative genius or inspiration, created statues of Wagner, Bach, Beethoven, Adam Mickiewicz and sculpted the phenomenon of Fryderyk Chopin's musical talent as many as five times.

Bolesław Biegas as a painter
Biegas started to paint while still in Kraków. In his paintings, he depicted oneiric visions of mysterious worlds (the "Mystics of Infinity" series), and also commented on the current political situation, as in the "Russo-Japanese War" (1907). The painting caused a scandal, resulting in it being removed from an ongoing exhibition in the presence of the police.

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

After the First World War, Biegas transformed himself into a painter for good and continued his artistic explorations. He created a series of stylised portraits of famous people inscribed in geometric, abstract variations of circles, called by critics spherical portraits.

Bolesław Biegas in Paris at the end of his life

Despite much good fortune in his life, from the 1930s onwards Bolesław Biegas' star dimmed. He lived alone in modest conditions. Towards the end of his life, he became close to the Polish émigré circle centred around the Historical and Literary Society in Paris, to which he bequeathed his property and artistic legacy with a note to donate his works to the Polish nation.

The artist died on 30 September 1954. and was buried in the cemetery in Montmorency, near Paris (known as the 'Pantheon of Polish Emigration'). Today, the building of the Polish Library in Paris, the headquarters of the Society, houses the Bolesław Biegas Museum Since 2015, we can also admire the artist's works in Warsaw, at the Bolesław Biegas Museum.