Dimensions: 74 x 89 cm
signed lower right: 'ADAM | STYKA'
Notes and auction labels on the frame
Provenance
Bonhams auction house, London, October 2021
private collection, Warsaw
Biography
He was the son of the painter Jan and the younger brother of Tadeusz Styka, a painter specializing in Oriental subjects. He studied mathematics and engineering, and later enrolled at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1908–1912). Early in his career, he painted genre scenes, but after a trip to North Africa, he focused primarily on paintings with Oriental themes. He found his motifs during his frequent trips to Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia, and Egypt. He exhibited his works mainly abroad, but during the interwar period he also held several exhibitions in Poland, including one at the Zachęta in Warsaw. These exhibitions were always hugely popular with the public, and the paintings on display found many buyers. He also painted religious subjects and worked as a book illustrator; among other things, he created illustrations for H. Sienkiewicz’s *In Desert and Wilderness*. After World War II, the artist lived and worked in the United States—he painted landscapes and scenes of life in Mexico and Arizona, as well as a particularly large number of religious paintings.
