The Artist
Early Life
It was in central Europe that Boleslaw Cybis, founder of
the Cybis Studio, spent most of his youth. Born on July
23, 1895 in Wilno, Lithuania, Cybis received various
athletic awards for gymnastic excellence during his school
days in Warsaw. In 1915, he attended St. Petersburg
Academy of Fine Arts while his father, a noted architect
and engineer, said to have designed Peterhoff, the summer
palace of the mother of Czarina Maria Fiodorowna, was
designing and building in Russia.
In 1921, the White Russian cause
collapsed and Cybis took refuge in Constantinople where he
lived an worked with artists, Constantin Alajalov and
Pavel Tchelitchev. Here he eked out a living of bread,
olives and goat's milk in exchange for sketching portraits
in cafes, painting sidewalk advertisements for theatres;
painting murals in nightclubs and cafes; painting and
designing stage backdrops for the ballet; fashioning clay
pipes in ornate designs from native clays. One of his
first "paid jobs" was a gigantic billboard
advertising Nestle's chocolate. In
1923 he saved enough money for transportation to go back
home to Warsaw, and entered the Academy of Fine Arts in
Warsaw, Poland. Upon graduation, Cybis was appointed a
professor at the Academy and traveled extensively
throughout Europe recording his experiences in his art
while studying the old masters and emulating their
techniques.
In 1926 he married Marja Tym, a talented
fellow artist and student at the Academy.
