Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz - Woman and Child

A great piece by sculptor Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz (1919–2005). 24 x 5 x 6. signed JJ

Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz (1919–2005) is considered “one of the greatest educators in the history of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.” In his studio, overlooking Krakowskie Przedmieście Street, he developed the so-called “education of partnership” and practiced an “open didactic method,” striving to “extract creative individual elements” from each of his students.44 Future eminent sculptors and pedagogues, including Krzysztof M. Bednarski, Barbara Falender, Grzegorz Kowalski, and Henryk Morel, studied in his studio. Jarnuszkiewicz sensitized his students to events affecting their own lives in terms of macro- and micro-history. Like himself, they created various types of commemorative forms – from monumental statues to statuettes and medals. They took part in competitions (often winning them) to commemorate individual people as well as social or historical events, including the extermination of the Jews during World War II.
Jarnuszkiewicz had the appropriate background to do this. He belonged to the team of Oskar Hansen that in late 1958 won the competition for the Oświęcim monument, commemorating the victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. A proposal of Hansen’s team entitled Road was presumably the most avant-garde monument project in postwar Poland.45 Sometime in 1961 or 1962 Jarnuszkiewicz himself created