Piotrowski Wacław – PORTRAIT OF A GIRL

signed in ballpoint pen lower right: Wacław Piotrowski

Provenance: the painting comes from the artist's estate.

In 1927, he received the City of Warsaw Award, in 1928 another award at the "pre-Olympic" exhibition, and then, in 1933, a silver medal at the Zachęta exhibition. At that time, he was at the peak of his success, and critics, both conservatives and avant-garde advocates, lavished praise on him. Konrad Winkler praised his paintings, and Stefania Zahorska wrote in 1928: "Piotrowski astonished with his serious approach to the subject." Painters expressed their appreciation: Wacław Husarski admired his "medium-like sense of the model's psyche," and Wiktor Podoski his "strange artistic alertness.".

Piotrowski practiced various painting techniques, but above all, he was a draughtsman, a skill he retained until the end of his life. He was a good landscape painter, but above all, a portraitist; in an interview several years ago, he said of himself, "I was and am an experimental psychologist.".

Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Remembrance of Wacław Piotrowski, Wacław Piotrowski. Posthumous Exhibition, ZPAP, MDM Art Gallery, Warsaw 1969.