Adam Marczyński was a Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

. He died in Kraków

Kraków

Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...

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Marczyński came into his own as an artist of post-war Kraków.

He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. He started exhibiting in 1933 and had his first solo exhibition a few years after that. Marczyński taught at the academy from 1945 to 1979. Besides teaching, he was a painter, did illustrations, was a graphic artist, and even did scenery design.

Around the war years, he embraced cubism

Cubism

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

 and a Polish variation of post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...

, called Colorism. Marczyński painted landscapes, portraits, still lifes, and interiors.

In the 1960s, he abandoned regular painting techniques, instead choosing to paint objects and make collage

Collage

A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....

s. By the '70s, Marczyński began making compositions in small cases. These items have doors that open and close; they became his main artistic focus.

Marczyński exhibited at many international art festivals, including the Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

 in 1956 and the documenta

Documenta

documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...

 II in Kassel

Kassel

Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...

in 1959. A catalogue was published in 1985 at a retrospective done posthumously at the Gallery of the Office of Artistic Exhibitions in Kraków.