Background
Landowski was born in Paris of a Polish refugee father of the January Uprising, and a French mother.
Landowski was born in Paris of a Polish refugee father of the January Uprising, and a French mother.
École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts.
His best-known work is the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He produced over thirty five monuments in the city of Paris and twelve more in the surrounding area. Among those is the Art Deco figure of Saint Genevieve on the 1928 Pont de la Tournelle.
He also created "Les Fantomes", the French Memorial to the Second Battle of the Marne which stands upon the Butte de Chalmont in Northern France.
Landowski is widely known for the 1931 Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A collaboration with civil engineer Heitor da Silva Costa and architect and sculptor Gheorghe Leonida.
Some sources indicate Landowski designed Christ"s head and hands, but it was Leonida who created the head when asked by Landowski. From 1933 through 1937 he was Director of the French Academy in Rome.
Landowski was the father of artists: painter Nadine Landowski (1908–1943), composer Marcel Landowski (1915–1999), and pianist and painter Françoise Landowski-Caillet (1917–2007).
He died in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburb of Paris, where a museum dedicated to his work has over 100 works on display.
A graduate of the French National Academy, he won the Prix de Rome in 1900 with his statue of David, and went on to a fifty-five-year career. He won a gold medal at the Art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics for Sculpture, an event held from 1912 to 1952. He also served as an art–juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919–1954 to young French painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers and musicians.
