In the large group of Polish soldiers who, together with General Władysław Anders, escaped Soviet misery through the Middle East, there was a large representation of artist-soldiers. One of the last two surviving artists-soldiers is Leon Stanisław Piesowocki. His fate, however, was not tied to his wandering from Soviet Russia to Italy, but was somewhat different.

Leon Stanisław Piesowocki was born in Poznań in 1925. He grew up in Jerzyce, except for a year's stay in Berlin. In 1943. - like many young inhabitants of Greater Poland, incorporated into the German Reich as Wartheland - he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. He was sent to France and then to the area around Livorno in Italy. He deserted to the Allies and was sent to a Polish transit camp at the II Corps base at Motolla near Taranto. He was then assigned to the Second Counterintelligence [sic!] Branch in the Third Carpathian Rifle Brigade.

Leon Piesowocki studied drawing and painting at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Rome. After moving with the Anders Army to Great Britain in 1946, he continued his studies at the Polish Studio of easel painting and applied graphics in Waldingfield near Sudbury, where the classes were taught by artists Marian Bohusz-Szyszko and Wojciech Jastrzębowski. After demobilisation, he was employed by the Portsmouth Urban Design Office in June 1947. Thanks to a grant from the Committee for the Education of Poles, he was able to study at Sir John Cass College of Art in London.

Piesowocki He was a co-initiator and member of the avant-garde artist Group 49. In 1976, he moved to a tiny village near Montelimar, near Lyon, where he still lives today.

Completed in 2019, the project consisted of two, integrally linked tasks and aimed to document the artist himself and his work. The first activity involved the production of an author's report by Prof. Jan Wiktor Sienkiewicz, together with in situ photographic documentation of Leon Piesowocki's artistic output (documentation of archival material relating to Group 49, as well as the artist's independent activities: manuscripts, typescripts, correspondence, iconography and other materials and works of art). As part of the second task, a film was recorded in the form of an interview-river conducted by Professor J.W. Sienkiewicz with the 94-year-old artist in his home.

The footage was divided into three parts and is available both on the YouTube profile of the Polonics Institute and on the website as part of the 'Oral History' series. They are:

Leon Piesowocki - Meeting

Leon Piesowocki - Italy, Great Britain, France

Leon Piesowocki - Roots