Wacław Szymanowski


Wacław Szymanowski was a Polish sculptor and painter. He is best known for his statue of composer Frédéric Chopin in Warsaw's Royal Baths Park.

Life

Szymanowski was born in Warsaw and was the son of, the journalist and writer, and the father of, the physicist and politician.
Until about 1895 the painter-cum-sculptor occupied himself mainly with executing genre paintings of Polish mountaineers and Hutsuls, and portraits.
He then turned to sculpture, creating compositions in Art Nouveau-Symbolist style. He designed the monuments to Artur Grottger in Kraków and to Frédéric Chopin in Warsaw; tomb monuments ; and portrait busts. He died in Warsaw at age 70.

Chopin monument

In 1907 Szymanowski designed the bronze statue of Frédéric Chopin that now stands in Warsaw's Łazienki Park. The statue was originally to have been erected in 1910, on the centenary of Chopin's birth, but it was delayed by controversy about the design, then by the outbreak of World War I. The statue was finally cast and erected after the war, in 1926.