"Self-Portrait with Telephone," Wiktoria Goryńska, 1930.
Woodcut artist Goryńska (1902-1945), while ethnically Polish, was born in Vienna, spent her childhood in the UK, and was educated in Berlin before establishing herself in Warsaw.
She was a star of the short-lived Warsaw School of woodcut art; this self portrait is her most famous work. She had her first solo show in 1931 and won multiple awards for her work as an artist and illustrator.
She was also a journalist, writing art essays and criticism, articles on fencing (she was an enthusiastic fencer), and giving English-language talks for Polish Americans on Polish Radio.
She was also intensely patriotic and worked fiercely for the Warsaw underground during the Nazi occupation. After the failure of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, she was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she perished. (Records are spotty, so it's unclear if it was disease or an execution.)
From a private collection.
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