Andrzej Pityński (born March 15, 1947 in Ulanów, a small town located at the confluence of the San and Tanew rivers in the Subcarpathian region, the former capital of rafting, died September 18, 2020 in Mount Holy, NJ, USA). His grandfather Andrzej Marcin Pityński (1902-1982) was a retman, i.e. the leader of the transport, of several connected rafts, where, at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, timber was floated along the San and the Vistula to Gdańsk.

Andrzej Pityński's parents - father Aleksander (1926-1994) and mother Stefania (1925-1997) met during the German occupation as AK-NOW partisans, fighting long after the end of the war for free Poland. His uncle Michał Krupa "Pułkownik" (1920-1972) - whom young Andrzej visited in forest hideouts - betrayed and cornered by the UB, MO, ZOMO was arrested on February 19, 1959 in Kulno near Leżajsk, as one of the last partisans in Poland after World War II. Pityński's grandfather, a former retman and uhlan, instilled in his grandson a love of horses, who recalls years later: "I have two passions - sculpture and horses. He connects them together. My favorite topic is the rider and the horse. By sculpting, I try to express the idea of ​​the movement of the horse and the rider, the harmony of merging two living beings into one body. Who has not experienced struggles with nature, has not traveled hundreds of kilometers in the saddle, breakneck falls, dangerous situations in which the rider and the horse help each other, trust and believe in each other, he will never understand me…”.
In the years 1968-1974, Pityński studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków at the department of sculpture with prof. M. Konieczny and J. Bandura. Even before graduating, he completed his first works: a monument to Ignacy Paderewski standing in front of the Collegium Padarevianum in Krakow, a bas-relief of Queen Jadwiga and a sculpture "Kircholm".

The fascination with horses continues, Pityński takes part in equestrian competitions, appears on a horse in the film "Black Clouds", his diploma at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow was titled "Rider and Horse - Autobiography" in the studio of prof. Jerzy Bandura, who recalled his student years later: "... Andrzej Pityński came to Krakow smiling shyly, I don't know how he got through the entrance exam - he didn't know anything. In his home sketchbooks you could see stagecoach robberies, images of sheriffs, etc. He started from scratch... He mainly talked about horses, and at school he "took obstacles" - his favorite saying...

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Pityński's next artistic path began with a sculpture by Artur Rubinstein. Today, among the completed projects, monuments have a special place: Partisans (Boston, 1983); Maria Curie-Skłodowska (Bayonne, 1987); "Sarmata" (Morris Museum); Jerzy Popiełuszko (Trenton, 1987); Pope John Paul II (Manhattan and Ulanów, 1989); "The Avenger" (Doylestown, Pennsylvania; American Częstochowa, 1988); "Katyń 1940" (Jersey City, 1991), "Blue Army Monument" (Warsaw, 2002).

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Source: "Portrait with history - Andrzej Pityński" (2022) - Czesław Czapliński