format:100x70cm,watercolor/gouache,sign.d.l. from the series Koszalin Green Landscape
Kazimierz "Kachu" Ostrowski lived in Poznań since 1920 and in Gdynia since 1934. During the war he was a prisoner in the Stutthof concentration camp. In 1945 he entered the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Sopot, where he studied painting under Janusz Strzałecki, Artur Nacht-Samborski and Jacek Żuławski. In 1949-1950 he stayed in Paris on a scholarship from the French government. He attended the studio of Fernand Léger. After returning to Poland, he engaged in painting, drawing, textile design, as well as wall painting and stained glass. Among other things, he made polychromes of the facades of rebuilt Old Town buildings in Gdansk and Poznan. From 1964 to 1987 he worked as a teacher at the State Higher School of Fine Arts in Gdansk. Ostrowski's painting owes much to his contacts with the art of Léger and other representatives of the 20th century avant-garde. The artist creates compositions built from simplified, geometric elements, characterized by rich colors and decorativeness. He often took up marine or labor themes, and made figural compositions of the panneaux type. He exhibited many times at review exhibitions, including the Third and Fourth National Exhibition of Fine Arts, 1953 and 1954, the Second and Third Exhibition of Modern Art, Warsaw 1957 and 1959, the Exhibition of Painting in the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Polish People's Republic, National Museum, Warsaw 1961, the Festivals of Polish Contemporary Painting in Szczecin 1962, 1966, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1982. In 1988 he was awarded the prestigious Jan Cybis Prize.
