Jan Styka

Jan Styka (April 8th, 1858 - April 11th, 1925) was a painter Polish known to have carried out great panoramas concerning the history and the Christian religion.

After having attended the school of Lwów where it had been born, it studied with the Academy of Art schools of Vienna, in Austria, then it resided during little time in Italy before settling in France at the time when form the great artistic movements of Montmartre took and from Montparnasse and it passed there most of its life.

Among major works of Styka the large scene is showing holy Pierre preaching the Gospel in the Catacombs, painted in Paris in 1902. Among his most known panoramas one finds Bem with Siedmiogrod (1897), Martyre of Christians in the Circus of Néron (1897) and with the section of Wrocław of the National museum of Poland is monumental the Bataille of Racławice painted in collaboration in 1894.

In 1910, Jan Styka painted a portrait of the famous pianist and the Polish statesman, Ignacy Paderewski, which is now with the National museum of Poland with Poznań.

Previously, a little before the end of the XIXe century, Paderewski had charged Styka with painting what would become its most known work in the whole world. Entitled in the beginning Golgotha (the name araméen for the site of the crucifixion), work is now known simply as La Crucifixion. It acts of a gigantic vertical panorama of 60 m length and 14 m in the height.

La Crucifixion has an attractive history. Before making it in 1894, Styka made the voyage from Jerusalem to prepare drafts and went to Rome, where its pallet was bénite by the pope Leon XIII.

Painting was revealed in Warsaw with a great success on June 22nd, 1897. It was presented in many towns of Europe, before going to America to join in 1904 the Exposure of Saint-Louis.

Painting was seized when the American partners of Styka could not pay the taxes of customs and during almost forty years one believed it lost. In 1944, painting was found, rolled up around a telephone post and in bad condition, having remained during decades in the cellar of the Chicago Civic Company Opera.

Acquired by the American business man, Hubert Eaton, painting was restored by the son of Jan Styka, the artist Adam Styka. It is exposed in the Hall of the Crucifixion to the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale in California. Painting underwent an important restoration in 2005-2006 within the framework of the celebration of the centenary of Forest Lawn.

Died in 1925 Jan Styka was buried in Rome. In 1959 however Hubert Eaton got along with his family of Styka so that its remainders were transported to the United States in order to find their place in the “Hall of Immortal” with the cemetery of Forest Lawn.

The wire of Tadeusz, “Tade” Styka (1889-1954) and Adam Styka (1890-1959), were both of the painters.

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