The aim of the Project is to elaborate and popularise Gottlieb’s legacy contained in the family collection and archived as Part I of this Project. This material contains previously unknown important information about the life and work of the artist, a founding member of the Paris art colony.
One of the major exponents of Polish modernist art, Leopold Gottlieb is little known in his home country. The primary goal of this project is to popularise his work in Poland. The first task is to digitise, preserve and elaborate the artist's legacy, now in the family collection in France. The collection contains Gottlieb's artworks and correspondence which stand as valuable testimony to the history of Polish culture abroad. The next part of the project will involve making this material available via a specially designed, accessible and visually appealing digital archive. The archive will continue to be developed after the conclusion of this project to encompass other collections of Gottlieb's work.
Leopold Gottlieb (1879, Drohobycz – 1934, Paris) – a Polish painter and draughtsman, younger brother of painter Maurycy Gottlieb (1856–1879), educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, a founding member (with Witold Wojtkiewicz) of the Grupa Pięciu [Group of Five]. A soldier and documenter of the Polish Legions, he later acted as a proponent of their role in Poland’s regaining of independence. A Polish patriot who spent the best part of his life in France and was active in the Viennese and Parisian artistic circles (Mela Muter, Eugeniusz Zak, Mojżesz Kisling), while maintaining close relations with Polish associations, including the Warsaw-based Rytm and the Kraków-based Formists.