Wladyslaw Hasior

Władysław Hasior was one of the leading Polish contemporary sculptors connected with the Podhale region. He was also a painter and theatre set designer. He studied under Professor Antoni Kenar at the State Secondary School of Visual Art Techniques in Zakopane and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He also spent a year in Paris as a scholarship holder and studied under Ossip Zadkine. His first individual exhibition was in 1961 at the Jewish Theater in Warsaw. Since then his works have been displayed at over seventy individual exhibitions in Poland and Europe. He also taught at his former school in Zakopane for a decade. Hasior’s art meant to provoke and shock the beholder. He continuously experimented with forms, techniques and materials by creating spatial compositions, assemblages and collages. He also authored many unconventional monuments and plein air sculptures, both in Poland and abroad. Since 1984 he focused on the continuous arrangement of his own gallery in Zakopane, which is now a branch of the Tatra Museum. He died on July 14, 1999, in Kraków.