Jean Wacław Zawadowski - Drawing (1921)

Forgotten Prints #5: Zavado/Zawado

Jean Waclaw Zawadowski [a.k.a. Zavado] (1891-1982)

Born in Volhynie in Russian Poland. Studied at the Fine Art School of Cracovie in Józef Pankiewicz's studio, beginning in 1910. Moved to Paris in 1912, became a part of the experimental arts scenes in Montmartre, and then Montparnasse, which included artists like Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, and Nina Hamnett, and poets and writers like Guillaume Apollinaire, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Jean Cocteau, among many others.

During the war Zavado went to Spain, and then back to Paris, but did not have his first major solo exhibit until the 1960s, followed by retrospectives in Cracovie and then in New York, in the 1970s. By this time he was mainly known for his “post-impressionist” landscape and still-life paintings. While he never became widely-known, over 100 of his works still circulate at auctions today, selling for anywhere from $500 to $10,000. Zavado’s family have also started a website, seeking to “gather as much information, knowledge and pictures of his productions that we can… documenting his pictorial work.”

While I like Zavado’s paintings a lot, this drawing, originally published in the underground arts magazine Coterie in 1921—the only thing by Zavado I can find from this early period, and in this style—I am absolutely in love with! There is a tenderness in the expression, a deftness to the line-work, and an overall sense of gestalt that I simply adore.

 
          For Waclaw Zawadowski
                   by Dick Whyte

       outlines of bodies
       sun-washed
       and shimmering,

       before the earth:

       horizons
       rubbled by distance
       rebuilding


                      xoxo
                        dw
 

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