Władysław Podkowiński

Podkowiński was born in Warsaw and began his artistic training at Wojciech Gerson's drawing school, and at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, at which he studied in 1880–1884. After graduating, Podkowinski began to contribute to many of the leading art journals in Warsaw at the time. In 1885, he travelled, along with Józef Pankiewicz, to the Imperial Academy of Arts where he studied in 1885–1886. Returning from St. Petersburg in 1886, Podkowiński obtained a position of an illustrator for the Tygodnik Ilustrowany magazine where he became one its most renowned artists.

His first watercolor and oil paintings were produced during this time, but Podkowiński still considered them personal, not a public endeavor. Those early paintings were mainly influenced by Aleksander Gierymski. He adopted painting as a profession after a trip to Paris in 1889, where he was profoundly influenced by French Impressionist painters including Claude Monet. Podkowiński was later credited for bringing the Impressionist movement to Poland, but toward the end of his life, his failing health inclined him toward Symbolism. He died in Warsaw at the very early age of 28 due to tuberculosis.

His best known painting, Frenzy of Exultations (Szał uniesień), exhibited first in Zachęta, is surrounded by the turn-of-the-century atmosphere of scandal and public outcry. In 1894, it was featured in a Warsaw art exhibition and violently criticized. The exhibition lasted only 36 days because Podkowinski brought a knife on the 37th day, and slashed his work on display. The painting was restored after his death. Today, it is prominently exhibited at the Sukiennice Museum in Kraków.