Xawery Dunikowski - Biography

Biography

Dunikowski was born in Kraków, a city he had an affinity for and would also use as the basis for a collection of art. When he was twelve his family moved to Warsaw, and after finishing his education in a technical school he studied sculpture under Boleslaw Syrewicz and Leon Wasilkowski. At twenty one, Dunikowski moved back to Kraków to study sculpture at the School of Fine Arts under Konstanty Laszczka, admirer of Auguste Rodin, and under Alfred Daun. He studied painting with Jan Stanisławski and after being enrolled for three years, he graduated with honors.

In 1902 Dunikowski began teaching sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, a professorship he would hold until 1909 when he was appointed to Chair for Sculpture at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. On January 18, 1905 he shot and killed with a revolver a fellow artist and popular Warsaw society figure Wacław Pawliszczak during a quarrel in a restaurant in Warsaw, then was arrested and released on 2,000 rubles bail while charged with manslaughter (crime of passion), however, he was never really tried by the Tsarist justice system, perhaps busy with the Revolution of 1905 and other problems, therefore he, being an Austrian subject, went eventually to Kraków and never did any time nor paid any retribution to the deceased family for his crime. Heading to Paris before the beginning of World War I, Dunikowski remained in France from 1914-1920 (served 5 years in the French Foreign Legion) until he returned to Kraków in 1921 to take the position as head of faculty of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts. While his working on Academy he educated many Polish sculptors, e.g.: Jerzy Bandura, Zygmunt Gawlik, Józef Gosławski, Maria Jarema, Jacek Puget and Henryk Wiciński, and Polish-American woodcarver Adam Dabrowski. Dunikowski did not leave Kraków until 1940 when he was arrested by the Gestapo.