STAZEWSKI, HENRYK

born Jan. 9, 1894, Warsaw, Russian Empire [now in Poland] died June 10, 1988, Warsaw Polish painter and graphic artist, leader of the Polish Abstractionist painters during the 1920s and '30s and the guiding force in the post-World War II rebirth of Polish modern art. Educated at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (191319), Stazewski was a founding member of three Polish artist groups during the 1920s and a member of the Cercle et Carre and Abstraction-Creation groups in Paris. Although most of his prewar works were destroyed during World War II, his large one-man show in Warsaw in 1955 signaled the reemergence of both Polish art and his own artistic career, which continued into the early 1980s. As a practitioner of Constructivismconstructed art inspired by Cubism and Futurism that celebrated machines and technologyhis work evolved into small, spare paintings and reliefs of lines and geometric shapes in pale colours or all-white, black, or gray designs. Stazewski received Warsaw's Golden Cross of Merit (1955) and Ministry of Culture Prize (1965).