A career and biography worthy of a film script. Bolesław Biegas - a self-made sculpting talent, a shepherd boy and an 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 considered a forerunner of several art movements as a 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 29 March 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, he went to live with his sister. He learned carpentry and the basics of sculpture from her husband. Then the story unfolded as 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. Biegas was taken to a woodcarver who treated him badly, so after a few months he fled to Koziczyn. This time, Fr Rzewnicki asked a local patron of the arts, a doctor, Franciszek Rajkowski, for help in nurturing his self-born talent. 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 innate talent. It was Świętochowski who suggested that the young man 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 organised a social initiative: a fundraiser for the education of the talented self-taught sculptor. The campaign was supported by several Warsaw magazines, which published articles and reproductions of the sculptures after the exhibition. 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, Art Nouveau, and decadence in art and literature, from which Kraków of those days was teeming, which found its reflection in the work of the young artist.

Biegas abandoned genre themes and naturalism for metaphysics and aesthetics from the direction 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 Glass Palace in Munich (German: Glaspalast).

Another smile of fate came with a scholarship from the Warsaw Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts for further education at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, where Biegas left in 1901. Nevertheless, 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 and friend of Apollinaire and Picasso, wrote appreciatively 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 gained fame and recognition. Boznańska soon painted a portrait of Biegas; they shared a cordial relationship as neighbours in Paris' Montparnasse.

The transformation of abstract and metaphysical concepts into artistic language became the theme of the artist's sculptural works. Biegas was able to form ephemeral feelings, experiences, tame the elements in permanent sculptural matter. He gave his realisations existential, symbolic titles.

With his synthesis of form, expression and geometrisation of figures, he was ahead of the artistic pursuits of the artists of his time. At the beginning of the 20th century, he was in top form - he created, exhibited and was successful. Privately, he became friends with his 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 permanent 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 depiction of the figure with a linear treatment of the eponymous 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 slightly earlier bust of the 'Sphinx' in a similar manner as in '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 Kyiv. Between 1902 and 1907, the artist spent an average of six months each in Ukraine, sculpting, painting and designing tapestries later woven 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 of morals, when 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 Bolesław Biegas Museum is located in the building of the Polish Library in Paris, the seat of the former Historical and Literary Society. Since 2015, the artist's works can also be admired in Warsaw at the Bolesław Biegas Museum.