ARTISTS from Poland

Top 2

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Polish Artists of all time. This list of famous Polish Artists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

1. Adolph Menzel (1815 - 1905)

With an HPI of 63.02, Adolph Menzel is the most famous Polish Artist.  His biography has been translated into 39 different languages on wikipedia.

Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel (8 December 1815 – 9 February 1905) was a German Realist artist noted for drawings, etchings, and paintings. Along with Caspar David Friedrich, he is considered one of the two most prominent German painters of the 19th century, and was the most successful artist of his era in Germany. First known as Adolph Menzel, he was knighted in 1898 and changed his name to Adolph von Menzel. His popularity in his native country, owing especially to his history paintings, was such that few of his major paintings left Germany, as many were quickly acquired by museums in Berlin. Menzel's graphic work (and especially his drawings) were more widely disseminated; these, along with informal paintings not initially intended for display, have largely accounted for his posthumous reputation. Although he traveled in order to find subjects for his art, to visit exhibitions, and to meet with other artists, Menzel spent most of his life in Berlin, and was, despite numerous friendships, by his own admission detached from others. It is likely that he felt socially estranged for physical reasons alone—he had a large head, and stood about four foot six inches (137 cm).

2. Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874 - 1927)

With an HPI of 56.21, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven is the 2nd most famous Polish Artist.  Her biography has been translated into 21 different languages.

Elsa Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven (née Else Hildegard Plötz; 12 July 1874 – 14 December 1927) was a German avant-garde visual artist and poet, who was active in Greenwich Village, New York, from 1913 to 1923, where her radical self-displays came to embody a living Dada. She was considered one of the most controversial and radical women artists of the era. Her provocative poetry was published posthumously in 2011 in Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. The New York Times praised the book as one of the notable art books of 2011.