Biography:
John (Janusz) Rzewuski was born in Zakopane, Poland. He spent his youth in the town, renowned for the beauty of the surrounding Tatra Mountains. After finishing high school, John left for Warsaw, where he studied Economics. Shortly after graduation, John left Poland, lived one year in Vienna, where he met his wife, Gerda and together they immigrated to Canada in 1967.
John started working in the head office of Bata, in the International IT group and is now retired, after 40 year career with the company. In his professional capacity, John traveled continually throughout the world and spent 4 years living in Paris. John speaks 5 languages: Polish, English, Spanish, French and German (with some dabbling in Japanese).
In his "artistic" life, John was always pursuing some type of creative activity, starting with classical piano that he studied for many years. Later came photography, including dark-room work, in color and black & white, with a number of awards in the Don Mills Camera Club and an award at the Toronto Star competition.
His interest in painting was re-awoken seven years ago when he started taking painting lessons at the Overland School and lessons from Vladimir Ribatchok, the established Russian artist. John often finds inspiration for his work during his travels, and also likes to visit museums, art galleries and exhibitions to further his education. John paints only in oil and his main interest is the very challenging area of figurative painting, portraits, particularly scenes with people (sometimes many) in a street scene or engaged in some type of activity. The subjects in John's paintings are from his own photographs, taken in different parts of the world. John has one daughter, Caroline and 4 grandchildren (aged 9 months to 7 years) and they are frequently appearing in his work.
John's paintings are owned by collectors in Canada, Poland and Peru. He also had a number of commissions for portraits.
For his work, John finds inspiration in the paintings of artists such as Sargent, Sorolla and a number of Russian and Polish painters.
In the last 5 years John has had 8 exhibitions in the Toronto Public Library (various branches). He also exhibited at the Ward Street Gallery in Bridgenorth in the summers of 2009 and 2010, as well as the Quarry Club in Ennismore.
To see John's other paintings, please visit his website at www.johnrzewuski.com
John can be contacted by email at johnr_ca@hotmail.com
Groups of Artists:
- North York Visual Artists
- www.nyva.ca