Patinated bronze on a marble base, signed and dated "ZW 2004"
Height: 29 cm
Zofia Wolska (Zagnańsk near Kielce, 1934 – 2016, Warsaw) studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków under Xawery Dunikowski beginning in 1950—she was the last student admitted to his studio. Together with Dunikowski, she left the Academy in 1955 and moved to Warsaw to continue her studies and collaboration with the professor until his death in 1965. She works in monumental and outdoor sculpture, as well as in intimate and small-scale sculptural forms. She is the creator of monuments in her home region: *The Executed in Kielce* (1961), the Partisans of the Kielce Region, St. Catherine near Kielce (1962), Stefan Żeromski in Kielce (1964), and many others. She is the creator of numerous portraits of historical and contemporary figures. Her sculptures from the Chopin series, created since 1975, are located, among other places, in Żelazowa Wola, in Valdemossa on Majorca, and at Warsaw’s Okęcie Airport. She has had many solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions both in Poland and abroad, winning numerous awards. She undertook many artistic trips and study visits, including on a scholarship from the U.S. Department of State (1980), a scholarship from the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York (1981), and a scholarship from the Berlin City Senate (1982). She was a visiting lecturer at the Hochschule der Künste in West Berlin (1980). From 1982 to 1989, she directed the “Ars Polona” Gallery of Polish Contemporary Art in Düsseldorf. In 1995, she established the “Studio Autorskie Rzeźby” in her studio in Warsaw’s Old Town, where she welcomes numerous guests from the worlds of art, culture, and politics, and also exhibits her sculptures. Since the 1990s, she has been working on a regular basis on commission for the Office of the President of Poland and the Government. Her works are presented to foreign guests; recipients have included Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, François Mitterrand, Vaclav Havel, King Baudouin I of Belgium, Valdas Adamkus, Queen Silvia of Sweden, Hillary Clinton, and Pope John Paul II. Her works are displayed in prestigious government buildings and representative public spaces.
