Wilhelm Kotarbiński was a Polish symbolist painter of historical and fantastical subjects. He was a representative of the Art Nouveau movement.
Background
Kotarbiński was born in Nieborów, Poland, on November 30, 1849. He was a descendant of an old noble Polish family. His father, Alexander, was an impoverished aristocrat, who held the position of a manager at the estate of the Radziwiłł magnates. His mother's name was Leokadia Wejsflok.
Education
Initially, Wilhelm Kotarbiński studied with Rafał Hadziewicz at the Warsaw School of Art between 1867 and 1871. Kotarbiński's parents were against his artistic career, that's why he entered the University of Warsaw, but stayed for only a short time before borrowing money from his uncle and migrating to Italy. The following year, he was able to arrange a scholarship from the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and began his studies at the Accademia di San Luca. There Kotarbiński studied with Francesco Podesti until 1875, living in poverty and suffering from typhoid.
Career
With the help from the Imperial Society and brothers Svedomsky, Kotarbiński founded his own studio in Rome and organized his first one-man exhibition. The artist's first commission was to copy the XVI century's manuscript from the Vatican Museum. The commission came from a famous art critic Vladimir Stasov. Wilhelm Kotarbiński left Italy in 1888, in order to start working on a massive public project, painting the Cathedral of St. Vladimir in Kiev. He was invited by his friend, Pavel Svedomsky. He worked there between 1889 and 1894, with several other well-known Russian and Ukrainian artists, notably Viktor Vasnetsov.
Under the supervision of Adrian Prakhov, an expert on old Russian and Byzantine art, Wilhelm Kotarbiński worked on 84 individual figures and 18 full paintings, including a large painting of the transfiguration of Christ. The artist's easily recognized style, in which he skilfully combined academism and Ukrainian folklore with Polish symbolism, also adding his imagination and mysticism, was extremely in demand among the public. During his work with Prakhov, Kotarbiński became friends with Adrian Prakhov's family.
During World War I, the artist made postcards on the basis of some of his paintings. They were sold for the benefit of soldiers' families. Besides, he created posters promoting donations to help victims of the Polish occupation. Many of his originals were lost or destroyed and survived only in the form of these postcards. At the time of the World War I and after the revolution, the artist had some difficulties going through what had happened. Wilhelm Kotarbiński desired to return to newly-independent Poland but his plans were ruined because of the unstable political situation in Russia.
The war covered the artist's work with a dark shadow. More often he portrayed the Grief, the Tears, the dead, the grave, the black angels. Until 1920 Wilhelm Kotarbiński was living at the hotel 'Prague' in the center of Kiev. The two-bedroom apartment accommodated both the artist's bedroom and his studio. After the revolution, the hotel was not a safe place to stay for Kotarbiński. Then the artist was threatened with arrest, and his apartment has been subjected to endless searches. Emilia Prahova came to the rescue and sheltered the artist in her house, where he lived till the end of his life.
Membership
In 1890 Wilhelm Kotarbiński joined the Union of South Russian Artists. In the year 1893, together with Jan Stanisławski and others, he founded the Society of Kiev Painters. Kotarbiński was named an Academician of the Imperial Academy in 1905.