Oil on panel, signed "Burke" lower left. Inscribed, signed, and dated on the reverse.
Dimensions with frame: 66x54 cm (55x43 cm)
Provenance: Zapiecek Gallery, Warsaw
Edmund Burke (Warsaw 1912–1999 Warsaw)—Polish painter and printmaker, creator of the polychrome murals in Warsaw’s Old and New Towns. From 1931 to 1935, he studied at the Municipal School of Decorative Arts and Painting under Professors Edward Butrymowicz and Mieczysław Schulz. From 1935 to 1939, he was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw under the guidance of Professors Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski and Leonard Pękalski. He defended his diploma only after the war—in 1946—under Professor Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski. During World War II, he served as a soldier in the Home Army (AK) High Command—Division VI of the Information and Propaganda Bureau. As a visual artist, he participated in the activities of “Operation N.” His apartment served as one of the hiding places for members of “Operation N.” In 1941, he took part in an operation to rescue Stanisław Tomaszewski (alias “Miedza”), who had been arrested by the Gestapo, from German custody. Together with Mieczysław Jurgielewicz, he designed the poster “To Arms, into the Ranks of the Home Army!”—created in the first days of August 1944. He participated in the Warsaw Uprising. After the surrender, he left Warsaw with the civilian population. From 1954 to 1960, he was responsible for designing and supervising the fresco and sgraffito decorations on the facades of tenement houses in Warsaw’s Old and New Towns, which had been rebuilt after being destroyed in the war. Edmund’s wife, Irena Burke (1922–2000), a set designer for Warsaw theaters, was the daughter of Leonard Piskorski.
