Adam Styka | Genre / Orientalist painter

French-Polish artist Adam Styka was a painter of genre scenes, landscapes and orientalist scenes.

Adam Styka (1890-1959) was born of a family of artists in Kielce, Poland.

He started studying with his father, the painter Jan Styka, and his brother, the portraitist Tadé Styka.

In 1908, he moved to Paris and completed his formal education at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts where he studied in the Studio of Fernand Cormon until 1912.

He started exhibiting his work at the Salon des Beaux-Arts in 1911, and in Paris most prestigious galleries: Galerie Georges Petit (1906), Galerie des Champs-Elysées.

In 1914, he exhibited at the Orientalist Salon and presented sixteen paintings which were noticed and admired for their extreme luminosity.

After a stint in the French military, Styka was awarded the National Order of Merit in tandem with French citizenship.

In 1944, Styka was commissioned to create images of Egyptian pyramids for a church in Warsaw. Originally intending to create a thorough painting over many months, Styka's arrest at the hands of German soldiers hastened progress on the work, where it was promptly completed and hung in the chapel until it was destroyed in a church fire in 2007.

As a result of this journey, which was to be followed by regular trips every year, Styka developed an entire genre based upon the depiction of Middle-Eastern and Oriental themes.

Among his works are landscapes and scenes of the Moroccan daily street life, including a great number of Moroccan love scenes: "Souks in Biskra"; "Meeting of Arabs Chiefs"; "Children riding donkeys by the Nile"; "Playtime in the Serail"; "Lovers"; "The Date".

His exquisite ability of captivating and conveying faithfully to his paintings the vibrating strong colors full of contrast of the hot Sahara Desert, colors harmoniously blended together, earned him the appellation "The Master of Sunlight".

Adam Styka è stato un pittore Franco-Polacco. Nato dall'importante pittore francese Jan Styka, divenne un discepolo del movimento orientalista, dipingendo raffigurazioni del West americano, motivi stranieri esotici e temi religiosi.

Dopo un periodo nell'esercito francese, Styka è stato insignito dell'Ordine al Merito Nazionale insieme alla cittadinanza francese.

Utilizzando la fedeltà del suo nuovo paese, si è recato in Nord Africa, assorbendo la cultura e le immagini islamiche per distillare nei suoi dipinti successivi, creando opere rese realisticamente con donne harem, guerrieri e paesaggi desertici.

Nel 1944, Styka fu incaricato di creare immagini di piramidi egizie per una chiesa a Varsavia. Inizialmente con l'intenzione di creare un dipinto completo per molti mesi, l'arresto di Styka per mano dei soldati tedeschi ha accelerato il progresso dei lavori, dove è stato prontamente completato ed appeso nella cappella fino a quando non è stato distrutto in un incendio della chiesa nel 2007.

Styka è morto a settembre 23, 1959 ed è sepolto a Doylestown, PA.