Bolesław Biegas, whose real surname was Biegalski (born 29 March 1877 in Koziczyn – the date 1879 is often incorrectly given; died 30 September 1954 in Paris) – sculptor, painter, writer. He was born and brought up in the Mazovian countryside; orphaned at an early age, he worked, amongst other things, as a shepherd and a carpenter’s assistant. His amateur clay sculptures had already been recognised by the local priest, Aleksander Rzewnicki, and a doctor from Ciechanów, Franciszek Rajkowski, who provided Biegas with the opportunity to learn to read and write, and also encouraged him to develop his artistic skills. Another mentor to the budding artist was the influential Aleksander Świętochowski, thanks to whose initiative funds were raised in the pages of the magazine *Prawda* for Biegas’s further education. His first publications in *Kurier Warszawski* and *Tygodnik Ilustrowany* (including reproductions of his works) contributed to a certain degree of popularity for this self-taught artist from a Mazovian village, partly due to the rural themes of his early works, and also because he had changed his surname to the more ‘peasant-sounding’ Biegas.

In 1897, he began his studies at the School of Fine Arts in Kraków under Alfred Daun, quickly achieving success and winning awards. He even came to the attention of the Viennese Secession and was invited to take part in its 10th exhibition in 1901. He completed the full course of study, but in 1901 he was expelled from Konstanty Laszczka’s studio and from the academy for disregarding academic standards. In Kraków, he came under the influence of the ideas and personality of Stanisław Przybyszewski, which left a decisive mark on the young artist’s mindset. His expulsion from the Kraków Academy, coupled with invitations to exhibitions in Vienna and Munich (also in 1901), contributed to the growing popularity of the rebellious sculptor. In December of that year, Biegas arrived in Paris thanks to a scholarship from the Warsaw Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts. He was to remain there until his death, visiting Poland only rarely.

From 1902, he enjoyed the patronage of Baron Henryk Trutschel and his wife Jadwiga, who ensured Biegas’s financial independence in Paris. His career there took off rapidly; he was written about by the most distinguished critics of the new independent art movement, not only those of Polish origin (Guillaume Apollinaire, Adolf Basler, Mieczysław Golberg, Jan Topass), but also native Frenchmen (including André Fontainas, Gustave Kahn, Charles Morice, André Salmon) and the famous Belgian poet and critic Émile Verhaeren. As early as 1902, he exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Indépendants, and the influential avant-garde cultural magazine *La Plume* devoted a special issue to Biegas. The next few years saw a succession of high-profile (and sometimes scandalous) solo exhibitions by the sculptor – in Paris, Vienna, St Petersburg and Kyiv; after 1910, he also exhibited in Kraków, Lviv and Rome, amongst other places. After 1911, he stopped taking part in major Parisian exhibitions, instead displaying his works in his own studio in Montparnasse. His last visit to Poland took place in 1913, but he maintained links with the Polish émigré community in Paris; for example, in 1918 he was one of the organisers of a major exhibition at the Hôtel Potocki, the proceeds of which were donated to Polish veterans of the First World War. After 1919, he once again began taking part in French exhibitions, including the Salon des Indépendants and prestigious Parisian galleries (Bernheim Jeune, Seligmann), exhibiting exclusively paintings.

After the First World War, Biegas gave up sculpture in favour of writing and, above all, painting. An exhibition at the Arlington Gallery in London in 1930 appears to have marked the end of Biegas’s public career – he was increasingly criticised (particularly as a painter), remained misunderstood, and was eventually forgotten. The artist spent the entire period of the Second World War in Paris; in 1943, his studio was damaged during a bombing raid. After 1945, he still attempted to hold exhibitions in his own studio (the last time being in 1949), but he was rarely visited, mainly by Polish émigrés, and lived in extreme poverty. In 1951, he joined the Historical and Literary Society, to which he bequeathed his entire body of work before his death. Biegas is buried at Champeaux in Montmorency, the most important cemetery for Polish émigrés.

Even his sculptural works from his student years (Conversation of Thoughts, Night, The Book of Life, Love of Death) placed Biegas amongst the leading figures in Polish sculpture and the most radical representatives of Symbolism in Europe – a movement which, in formal terms, was initially close to Art Nouveau. These works revealed a tendency to express the inexpressible, to depict mystery, and to construct a complex pyramid of meaning that seems to overflow with visions. This stylistic approach finds its fullest expression in the 1902 composition *Chopin’s Funeral March* (National Museum in Warsaw), which also embodies the strong influence of Przybyszewski. Biegas’s musical references to Symbolism are, in fact, wide-ranging, encompassing, for example, a sequence of works dedicated to Bach, Beethoven and Wagner. Stanisław Brzozowski called Biegas ‘a musician of sculpture’. In 1909, he submitted a design for a competition to create a monument to Chopin in Warsaw. In most of his works from the first decade of the 20th century Biegas employed a complex, dishevelled form, yet he rarely ventured beyond the representation of bas-relief – the multidimensionality of the solid form seems to have held no interest for him; the sculpture remains a silhouette viewed from the front. The Enchanted Palace (1902) even appears to be nothing more than a drawing etched into plaster. After 1902, the expression of texture would become simpler; in some works, the form is reduced; the geometrisation evident, for instance, in the famous sculpture *God* was regarded as a precursor to the Cubists’ explorations, though in Biegas’s case it certainly stemmed from entirely different reasons. The Art Nouveau fluidity of form did not disappear, and the sculptor would often manneristically repeat solutions he had already employed many times, making it difficult to discern a clear evolution in his artistic explorations.

Even in his early work, a feature characteristic of Biegas’s entire oeuvre emerges: an excess of content (also signalled in poetic titles such as *The Dream of God*, *The Eternity of Mystery*) over attention to form, and the emotional and ideological saturation (or even oversaturation) of his works, as a result of which his formal nonchalance appears to be beyond his control. At the same time, his literary inspirations – evident, for instance, in the dedication of many sculptures to Adam Mickiewicz, Zygmunt Krasiński, Juliusz Słowacki and Charles Baudelaire – appear to be of a superficial nature. This unbridled freedom, or even anarchic approach to the use of means of expression, was often regarded in the first decade of the 20th century as a virtue of Biegas’s work, with critics seeing him as an avant-garde revolutionary and even placing him in the vicinity of the Italian Futurists. As Antoni Potocki wrote in 1902, Biegas ‘improvises breathlessly’.

An important—and the least controversial—part of Biegas’s sculptural output at that time consisted of portraits (including that of Olga Boznańska from 1902, with whom he had become friends in Paris, Eliasza Miecznikowa from 1903, and Verhaeren from 1906). In these, moreover, one can identify parallels, or perhaps even inspirations, with the work of Laszczka or Stanisław Ostrowski.

On the other hand, the most controversial aspect of Biegas’s work is his painting, both because of its artistic quality, poetics and subject matter, and because of his sometimes provocative iconographic ideas. As early as 1907, he caused a scandal by exhibiting the painting *The Russo-Japanese War* (private collection), in which he depicted the rulers of the time naked in a bizarre allegory. In contrast to his work in the field of sculpture, in his painting Biegas engaged politically on several occasions, thereby breaching all norms, including those of public decency. Between 1914 and 1918, he created a series of several dozen paintings entitled *The Vampires of War* (Paris, owned by the Historical and Literary Society); in the final years of his life, he painted portraits of world leaders (including Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi) and personifications of nations. In the interwar period, however, his painting was dominated by mystical themes, rendered in various artistic styles, including Biegas’s favourite convention, so-called ‘sphérisme’, which was associated – without much justification – with inspiration from Italian Futurism. What remains beyond doubt, however, is his fascination at that time with the paintings of Arnold Böcklin (e.g. in the 1928 work *Juliusz Słowacki*; private collection). Stylistic inconsistency, mannered repetitions and thematic dispersion reached their peak during this period. The issue of the limitations of artistic means in Biegas’s uneven body of work (in painting, but to some extent also in his sculpture) remains unresolved. Was his primitivism a consciously adopted aesthetic, or was it the result of an awareness of his own technical limitations and lack of skill? Did his departures from all conventions stem precisely from these limitations, or from an unbridled, explosive creative imagination? His painting was sometimes classified as naïve or amateurish, and even confused with the work of Henri Rousseau, known as ‘The Customs Officer’. Undoubtedly, Biegas’s intellectual and artistic chaos makes it difficult to assess his work and compels us to view him as an outsider. Perhaps Jan Topass described this creative universe most aptly in 1928:

‘This born Symbolist […], with a brush or chisel in his hand, seeks to depict that which is difficult to express in words and which music can barely hint at: the misty secrets of the soul, the fears and expectations associated with the diversity of life, the mystery of death. In that dream, which usually turns out to be a nightmare […] he sees spectres, ghouls, vampires, chimeras […], mighty and terrifying monsters, distorted masks…”

Biegas’s considerable literary output remains almost entirely forgotten, including his plays (Michał Anioł, which was staged in Paris in 1912; Lechit; Saturn).

From around 1901 until the outbreak of the First World War, Biegas was regarded as a star of the Parisian avant-garde and enjoyed international fame. Gradually falling into obscurity thereafter, for many decades he was known only for a few of his sculptures that had been reproduced and exhibited – works regarded, moreover, as little more than curiosities, extravagant outgrowths of belated Symbolism. The gradual rediscovery of his work, the reconstruction of his life story and the reception of his oeuvre has been ongoing since the 1980s and is largely due to Xavier Deryng, who has devoted several dozen texts to Biegas (initially exclusively in French and known within French academic circles, and subsequently also in Poland). In 1992, he organised a major solo exhibition in Paris (Trianon de Bagatelle), accompanied by a monumental catalogue containing comprehensive documentation. He also sought to raise the profile of the artist and his work. The renewed recognition of Biegas’s body of work in Europe has been a slow process; as early as the 1980s, individual works were acquired by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris (one sculpture, followed by a unique textile) and the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. Since the end of the 20th century, Biegas’s works have appeared in abundance in museums and at exhibitions across Europe. The largest collection of his works, held at the Polish Library in Paris, was used to establish the Biegas Museum there in 1974, and this marked the first official recognition of his stature. The Mazovian Museum in Płock also holds a significant collection and has had a permanent Biegas section since 2011. In 2015, a permanent exhibition of his paintings and sculptures was also opened in Warsaw, thanks to the collaboration between the Bolesław Biegas Foundation and the Polish Library in Paris.