Born in Warsaw, Poland (1885 - 1942)

Roman Kramsztyk, The Negro Musician, oil on canvas, 100x81 cm.Roman Kramsztyk studied art in Munich from 1904-1908. "For 30 years – from [his] debut in the Warsaw Zachta [the Warsaw Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts] in 1909 up to 1939 – Kramsztyk was one of the most important participants in Polish artistic life. Even though he had been living in Paris since 1911 (with an interlude during the years 1915-1922) and regularly presented his works at Salons (des Ind?pendants, Automne, and des Tuilleries), he had never broken ties with his homeland."*

Continuing to take part in Polish exhibitions (e.g. the First Exhibition of Polish Expressionists in Krakow, 1917 and the Exhibition of Polish Legions in Lublin, 1917), Kramsztyk “… was co-founder of the ‘Rytm’ Society of Polish Artists – one of the most important artistic groups of the twenty years between the wars.”

In 1939 Kramsztyk’s mother died in Warsaw, where the war trapped him. In 1940, he moved into the Warsaw Ghetto and on August 6, 1942 "…he was shot during the so-called Grossaktion, the operation that liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto." *

In 1997, the Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw mounted a major retrospective and published a complete catalog of Kramsztyk’s works.

* Renata Piatkowska, Roman Kramsztyk, Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw, 1997.