The painter, printmaker and illustrator Katerina (Käte) Wilczynski was born in Poznań in Poland, but spent a large part of her life based in Britain. Although she painted portraits and cityscapes throughout her career, she is best known as a landscape artist.

Wilczynski spent extended periods of her early life in Berlin. She studied art in Leipzig in 1916 and 1917 and then in Berlin during 1918, before moving to Paris where she undertook freelance work. In 1930 she won a Prix de Rome scholarship, and used the funds to move to that city. While in Rome she drew churches and monuments, before in 1939 moving to London. During the Second World War Katerina Wilczynski drew buildings and landmarks damaged by bombing, and contributed pieces to the war artists exhibitions held in the National Gallery.

After the war she travelled extensively, especially in Greece and Italy, and an exhibition of her Greek portraits and landscapes was held in at London’s Ansdell Gallery in 1970. Drawings by Wilczynski appeared in several books including Daphnis and Chloe, Homage to Greece, and The Love Songs of Sappho, though the 1922 etchings for Kyrie Eleison are her only truly erotic work.

Similar artists

Bele Bachem – German illustrator of fairy-tale and surreal literary subjects.
Marcus Behmer – German illustrator of refined fin-de-siècle erotic and literary subjects.
Joanna Chrobak – Polish contemporary painter of mythological and Renaissance-influenced subjects.
Jean de Bosschère – Belgian-British illustrator of refined literary and classical subjects.
Mariette Lydis – Austrian-French illustrator of refined erotic-literary subjects.
Sigismunds Vidbergs – Latvian Beardsleyesque printmaker of refined erotic subjects.