Edward Okuń , Polish Nouveau-Symbolist

Around the time I visited Poland's National Museum, a few paintings by Edward Okuń (1872–1945) were in the same room as many of those by the more famous Symbolist Jacek Malczewski. But the gallery guidebook stressed that in portraits, his style tended to be Art Nouveau. His Wikipedia entry does not categorize him.

Okuń came from what the entry calls an aristocratic family, and he had an inheritance that probably left him free to pursue art pretty much as he desired. He began his training in Czarist Warsaw and them moved on to Munich and Paris. During the first two decades of the 20th century he was in Italy, thereby avoiding the Great War battles in Poland and only returned to Warsaw after the 1920-21 Soviet-Polish war. He continued to visit Italy and painted there. Okuń was not able to escape World War 2 and was in Warsaw during the 1944 uprising and German retaliation.

Gallery

Portrait of the Artist's Wife - 1904

Philistines - 1904

View Through Window - 1905

The Winner - 1910

Self-Portrait - 1913

Musica Sacra - 1915

The War and Us - 1923

Naples Bay and Vesuvio - 1937