Kazimierz Mitera, Stained Glass, 1932

Kazimierz Mitera (1897–1936)

Stained glass, 1932

gouache on paper, 50 x 64.5 cm

on the reverse: Kazimierz Mitera | copy of a stained-glass window from the Trocadero Gallery, 1932, Paris, 1932

Condition: tears along the edges

After the outbreak of World War I, he joined the Polish Legions in 1914 and served in the ranks of the 1st Uhlan Regiment of the Polish Legions. From 1915, he served in the Austrian Army. During the mobilization in November 1918, he joined the Academic Battalion and fought in the defense of Lviv and Przemyśl. He then became a crew member of the “Smok” armored train, with which he took part in the battles near Borysław and Lviv. On February 21, 1919, he was captured and imprisoned by the Ukrainians; he was released two months later. He was transferred to a railway battalion, with which he took part in the Polish-Bolshevik War, and after the end of hostilities, he participated in the reconstruction of railway lines in the Eastern Borderlands. He was also active in organizations involved in the repatriation of Poles from Siberia and central Russia. After 1922, he studied simultaneously at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and at the Department of Art History at Jagiellonian University. He was a co-founder of the Union of Polish Visual Artists and served as editor-in-chief of *Głos Plastyków* (*Voice of Visual Artists*), in which he also published his own columns. Absorbed by his social activism, he did not participate in many exhibitions; his artistic output consists of a few landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, as well as the painted decoration of St. Catherine’s Church in Toruń.