Mother with child

Leopold Lewicki - painter and illustrious graphic artist - studied in the years 1925-1932 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow in the studios of Władysław Jarocki, Józef Mehoffer and Fryderyk Pautsch and for a year (1930-1931) in Paris (branch of the Krakow Academy) headed by Józef Pankiewicz.

His stay in Paris revealed left-wing socio-political beliefs of Lewicki. For active participation in one of the demonstrations organized in Paris in 1931 by the French Communist Party, the artist was expelled from France. After returning to Krakow, he joined a group of students with similar beliefs - Jonasz Stern, Stanisław Osostowicz, and Aleksander Winnicek - taking up the fight with the anachronistic teaching system, in the name of new creative possibilities and social needs of art.

In 1932, his works were removed from the annual exhibition of students of the Academy for "improper artistic interpretation and inappropriate: anti-state and anti-religious, titles of works", and after police intervention in the Academy of Fine Arts and after revision in the apartment, Lewicki was arrested. As a consequence of the whole event, he was relegated from the university. A year later, together with other radical students, for whom art was to be an expression of their political views and artistic convictions, he founded the Krakow Group.

In painting, and above all in graphic art, Lewicki took up issues in the lives of handicapped layers and social groups - urban and rural poor and Jews. At the formal field, he sought simplicity and power of expression, drawing from the achievements of French purism, Italian futurism and German expressionism. He undertook experiments with collage, enriching the structure and texture of works with non-painting materials.