Artistic Career
Malczewski moved to Kraków at age 17, and began his art education in 1872 under the watchful eye of Leon Piccard. He attended his first art classes in the workshop of Władysław Łuszczkiewicz at the School of Fine Arts. A year later, in 1873, reassessed by Jan Matejko himself, Malczewski formally enrolled in the School, and studied with Łuszczkiewicz, Feliks Szynalewski and the drawing with Florian Cynk. In 1876 he went to Paris, France and studied for a year at the École des Beaux-Arts, in the studio of Henri Lehmann. He attended also the Académie Suisse.
Malczewski started his master studies with Jan Matejko already in 1875 before embarking on a trip to France, and completed them in 1879 after his return from abroad back to Partitioned Poland. In spite of considerable aesthetic differences between them, Malczewski was greatly influenced by Matejko's historical painting filled with neo-romantic metaphor and patriotic themes. He was equally impressed with the dramatic art of earlier Polish Romantic painter Artur Grottger. His painting revolved around a few carefully selected motifs, constantly retold and expanded into mythology filled with national symbols. His own awakened imagination enabled Malczewski to free the creative voice within and give rise to new aesthetic ideas defining Poland's school of Symbolism.
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