ArtistPolish
Kazimierz Szemioth
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Kazimierz Szemioth was born on April 7, 1933 in Warsaw and died on October 10, 1985 in Warsaw. Alongside his visual art practice, he was also a poet, songwriter, publicist and variety-show actor - a combination that made him a distinctive figure in Warsaw's cultural life during the post-war decades. He used the pseudonym Lucjan Kaszem in his literary work.
His path into the visual arts was unconventional. In 1952 he enrolled in the Painting Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, but military conscription interrupted his studies before he could complete them. Following a discharge for health reasons, he continued his training privately at the drawing and painting school run by Emilia Wysocka in Warsaw from 1953 to 1959. This private apprenticeship shaped his technical foundations and his commitment to figurative work.
Szemioth worked across a range of media - watercolor, oil, gouache, tempera and acrylic - and also drew with pen, including on porcelain. He practiced lithographic printmaking in addition to painting on canvas and board. The subjects he returned to most consistently were horses, equestrian scenes, carriages, and genre scenes from Polish provincial life. These motifs gave his work a grounded, vernacular character that set it apart from the more abstract currents in Polish postwar art.
His exhibition record spans both domestic and international venues. In Poland he participated in the Festival of Fine Arts at the Zacheta National Gallery in Warsaw (1967), the National Painting Exhibition "Rider and Horse" (1968), and various group and national exhibitions through the early 1980s. Abroad, his individual exhibitions included showings in Vienna (1971), Copenhagen (1973), a watercolor miniature exhibition in New York in 1975 where he won first prize, Bern (1980), Paris (1984-1985) and Brussels (1985). He also received second prize at the Warsaw exhibition "Tadeusz Brzozowski, students and friends" in 1981, and a prize at the National Watercolor Exhibition in Koszalin in 1982. He was decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.
On the auction market, Szemioth's work circulates primarily through Polish auction platforms such as DESA Unicum, OneBid and Agra-Art, where watercolors and oil paintings appear regularly. In Sweden, a group of his works came up at Ekenbergs auction house, including oil paintings of horse motifs and mixed media figurative scenes, as well as small metal sculptures. Prices at Swedish auction have been modest, reflecting the limited recognition of Polish postwar figurative painting outside its home market, but the presence of his work in the Nordic region signals that at least some of his output traveled west during his lifetime or through later estates.