Bronislaw Krawczuk was born in Panasowka, a village
in the former Polish part of Ukraine, where his father worked on a large estate. When he
was a boy, Krawczuk contracted a serious disease which left him with a partial muscular
paralysis that prevented him from study and work as he wished.
After the war he did light work in a kolkhoz. On one occasion, greatly impressed by a
stained glass window which he saw in a church, he started collecting bits of glass and
painted them. His little pictures found buyers and he also earned money by painting
slogans and "obligation assumed" on kolkhoz agricultural equipment during the
harvest time and various state anniversaries.
He went to Poland as a repatriate in 1957, settling in the town of Gliwice, Silesia,
together with his wife and children. While working on odd jobs - night watchman, porter,
stoker in a boiler room - he yearned for the fields of his native village, comparing it
with smoke-blackened Silesia, which was somehow alien to him. He painted what he could
remember but after a few years started doing Silesian landscapes as well. He visited
exhibitions of "real" painters and read art books. But Van Gogh was the only
artist who made an impression on him. People began to take interest in his paintings and
he received first prize at several amateur competions and exhibitions. Different from
other painters, he created a world of his own.
Krawczuk’s works are in many Polish museums and collections (among others, in museums
in Zabrze, Bytom, Wroc»aw, Cracow and Warsaw. He has had many one-man shows in Poland and
abroad (West Germany and Switzerland) and has taken part in all important group
exhibitions of Polish naive art.
Source: Oto Bihalji-Merin & Nebojsa-Bato Tomasevic: "World Encyclopedia of Naive Art". London 1984. pp. 371-372.
