Behold the Protong!
January 23, 2008 9:18 PM Subscribe
Stanislav Szukalski was born in Warta, Poland on December 13, 1893. When he was only six years old, a teacher sent him to the headmaster's office for whittling a pencil. The headmaster examined the pencil more closely and discovered that young Stanislav had carved a tiny, near-perfect figure.Szukalski studied art in the United States as a teen, then returned to his native Poland, where in 1934, he was declared "The Greatest Living Artist" by the Polish government, and was to be given his own museum to house his works. Unfortunately, The Siege of Warsaw forced him to flee to the United States. The museum was destroyed by bombing, and much of his work was destroyed.
Back in the States, he toiled in obscurity until 1971, when his work was discovered by Glenn Bray. Bray became his patron, and issued two publications of his work. Bray also attempted to generate interest from museums, but despite the quality and quantity of Szukalski's work, they were not interested. Szukalski's strange and passionate belief in his "science" of
Zermatism may have contributed to their antipathy. He believed that all human culture was derived from a single perfect race that originated on Easter Island, and that racial variation was due to interbreeding with the
Yetinsin, an interbreeding that would ultimately lead to the downfall of humanity.
posted by louche mustachio (8 comments total)
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posted by papakwanz at 9:25 PM on January 23, 2008