Kuna Henryk – WOMAN'S HEAD, before 1939

bronze, cast, patinated, base – marble (secondary), height 28 x 21 x 13.5 cm

signed H. KUNA, D. KRANZ | WARSAW

Compare: Mieczysław Wallis, Henryk Kuna, published by "Arkady", Warsaw 1959, catalogue no. 9, illustrations 30-31.

After his stay in Paris in 1911 and his encounter with the work of Aristide Maillol, Henryk Kuna freed himself from the impressionist style in which he had initially created, influenced by the school of Auguste Rodin, propagated in Poland by Konstanty Laszczka, his master. His sculptures became an example of combining realism with idealizing, timeless classical beauty. The artist abandoned the non finito manner in favor of a refined, sculptural fini, which earned him widespread recognition and a position as one of the leading representatives of new classicism in Polish sculpture. One of the first sculptures he created after returning from Paris was the marble Girl's head in a hood, purchased by the Venetian authorities, currently kept in the collection of the local Galleria d'Arte Moderna.

The series of female heads, with lowered eyelids and faint, barely perceptible smiles, created in subsequent years is now considered an iconic sculpture of Polish art of the interwar period. The artist created his sculptures in a variety of materials – plaster, marble, wood, and also cast in bronze.

Marble Woman's head, which was probably a model for a bronze casting of the work on offer, after the war became part of the collection of Professor Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz (cf. M. Wallis, op. cit.). The bronze was made by Dawid Kranc, a Warsaw caster specializing in artistic casting, who, after a few years in France, returned to Warsaw in 1934 (cf. M. Dubrowska, Bronze Works of Krasnosielski, Wasilewski Krantz (vel Kranc) and Their Artistic Castings, "Almanach Muzealny", 1997, p. 140). The bronze on offer is one of the few sculptures commissioned by the artist himself that have survived to this day. Therefore, it is undoubtedly a collector's item.

Technique: patinated bronze | Dimensions: 28 x 21 cm