Adam Styka, LITTLE TUNISIA

40.9 x 32.6cm - oil, canvas pasted on cardboard signed p.d.: ADAM | STYKA [name in box].

On the reverse (in ink): "Petite tunisienne" | pinxit Adam Styka.

In addition, oval stamp of a store of painting supplies: TOILES & COULEURS FINES | MAISON E. MORIN | MORIN & JANET, SUC | 5 - Rue Lepic - 5. PARIS | Téléphone MARCADET 07-51; below stamp with number: 6; l.g., opposite composition, number (in pencil): 19.



Painting light is considered a very difficult thing to do in a painting. Styka overcame this difficulty. The simply laid paints tell us the wilds of the East, giving us a foretaste of pharaonic lands, the spell of legend associating with the real world....

Wladyslaw Wankie, quoted in Cz. Czaplinski, The Styka Family Saga / Saga of the Styka Family, New York 1988, p. 145.

Similar scenes with figures of Arab women, children or men busy drawing water, watering donkeys or rinsing linen were a frequent motif in the artist's paintings. Painted in broad, free brushstrokes, they are characterized by strong, saturated colors and harsh light.



♣ A fee will be added to the auctioned price in addition to other costs, based on the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Law of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite).

Adam Styka (Kielce 1890 - New York 1959) - son of painter Jan and younger brother of Tadeusz Styka - was an Orientalist painter. He initially studied mathematics and engineering, and later entered the École Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris (1908-1912). During World War I he served in General J. Haller's Blue Army - first in France (medal for the Battle of Verdun), then in Poland. As a painter, he began with genre scenes, but after a trip to North Africa, he created mainly oriental paintings. He found motifs during, repeatedly, trips to Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Egypt. He exhibited his works mainly abroad, but in the interwar period he also had several exhibitions in Poland, including at Warsaw's Zachęta Gallery. These shows were always very popular with the public, and the exhibited paintings found many willing buyers. Adam Styka also painted religious paintings (the well-known painting of Christ the King; 1944; for the Palotine Fathers in Warsaw; destroyed in a fire in 2007) and was involved in book illustration, including the illustrations for "In Desert and Wilderness" by H. Sienkiewicz. After World War II, the artist lived and worked in the United States - painting landscapes and inhabitants of Mexico or Arizona, as well as - especially numerous - paintings of religious subjects. He also directed conservation work on the Golgotha panorama, the work of his father, Jan Styka (unveiled after restoration in 1951 in Los Angeles).