Maria Łunkiewicz-Rogoyska

Maria Łunkiewicz-Rogoyska came from a family of painters. She studied painting and applied graphics from 1921-24 at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. She then returned to Poland, but frequently went abroad, often returning to Paris, where she met avant-garde painters like Piet Mondrian and the group Cercle et Carré. In Poland, she was in contact with groups like Praesens, Blok and others. In 1933, she was one of the founding members of the Polish Association of Visual Artists. After divorce from her husband, officer Jerzy Antoni Łunkiewicz (1892-1956), she lived with the leading avant-garde artist Henryk Stażewski (1894-1988). In 1936, she represented Poland at the Olympic art competitions with her oil painting Football (89.5 x 116.5 cm), which is now in the National Museum in Poznan.

During the Warsaw Uprising, some of her paintings were destroyed by fire. In 1947, she joined the Club of Young Artists and Scientists. In 1946, she married the engineer Jan Zbigniew Rogoyski (1902-1967). For many years Łunkiewicz-Rogoyska and Stażewski were the center of a circle of young artists and intellectuals. Later, she joined the group of the Polish author Miron Białoszewski (1922-1983), and worked with the Tarczyńska Theatre. She was Influenced by cubism before World War II, and she is considered as a representative of purism in Poland. While her earlier works included landscapes and sport motives, she later completely painted in a non-representational style.