Władysław Podkowiński

Władysław Podkowiński (1866–1895) was a Polish Impressionist and proto-Symbolist painter whose short career produced two of the most discussed Polish paintings of the late nineteenth century. Trained in Warsaw and Paris, where he absorbed French Impressionism, Podkowiński introduced the new manner to Warsaw with his sun-drenched landscapes and intimate domestic scenes. His monumental Symbolist allegory Frenzy of Exultations (1893–1894), depicting a naked woman atop a black horse, became the most scandalous Polish painting of its decade. Podkowiński slashed the canvas on its closing day and died of tuberculosis a few months later, aged twenty-eight.

Podkowiński's Impressionist work uses broken touch, luminous palettes, and intimate plein-air subjects. His Symbolist works combine academic figure drawing with hallucinatory color.

Podkowiński introduced Impressionism to Polish painting and produced one of the most discussed Symbolist canvases in Eastern European art before his early death.