Watercolor on paper, signed and dated lower right “AM May 1941,” inscribed on the reverse “Fishermen on the Way to Mostowa.”
The watercolor depicts a view of buildings that no longer exist, having been destroyed during World War II; the towers of the Church of the Holy Spirit are visible in the background.
Dimensions in frame: 40x55 cm (33x47 cm)
Aleksander Maj (Warsaw 1883–1952 Warsaw), printmaker and painter, son of Ludwik and Aniela (née Seredyńska). From 1897, he took drawing classes at the Museum of Industry and Agriculture; from 1900 to 1903, he studied engraving under Józef Holewiński and Władysław Klejn, while also attending the Warsaw Drawing Class; from 1904 to 1905, he studied painting under Kazimierz Stabrowski in a studio on Zgoda Street. During his studies, he was active in an organization providing clandestine education in the Old Town. He practiced woodcut, oil painting (mainly commissioned portraits; after World War II, the series of paintings “Uprising Barricade”), and watercolors, as well as polychrome painting; he designed posters (in 1922, he received an honorable mention for his poster design “The Annexation of Upper Silesia to Poland,” which was purchased by the Warsaw City Council). He also worked in the conservation of paintings and prints. From 1948 to 1950, he restored paintings at the Camaldolese monastery in Bielany, Kraków. In 1905, he won first prize for a pen-and-ink drawing in a competition organized by the “Urania” Scientific Aid Society. He exhibited in 1906 at the Krywult Salon; in 1933, he exhibited paintings at an exhibition of works by members of the Club for the Propagation of Aesthetics and Beauty in the halls of the Glass Houses Association in Żoliborz; and in 1948 at the Visual Artists’ Club at the Warsaw Housing Cooperative in the same district. After the war, he was an associate member of the Association of Polish Fine Artists (ZPAP). Most of his prewar body of work was destroyed during the war; some of it was burned along with his apartment.
