Folk sculpture "Figure of a saint" - Executed by Dionizy PURTA (b. 1941).

pine and beech wood, polychrome and carved, carpenter's board; 60 x 23 x 10 cm;
author's workshop, Bialystok, after 2000.

Dionizy Purta (born May 22, 1941 in the village of Lewona, lives and works in Bialystok) one of the most outstanding folk artists involved in wood carving, highly regarded by connoisseurs of art naif and art brut in Poland and abroad. The artist is sometimes compared with other representatives of intuitive art and representatives of primitivism. Dionizego Purta's sculptures can be found in collections of folk and non-professional art abroad in France, Lithuania and Berlin, among others, in museum departments of ethnography and among well-known Polish private collections, such as those of the patron of non-professional art Leszek Macak - in Cracow, Krzysztof Kawęczyński - in Biebrzanski Museum of Art in Goniądz. His colorful, peculiarly brightly decorated - inspired by folklore and motifs of medieval art - figurines of angels, saints and birds are objects of desire, constituting a collector's rarity. Dionizy Purta is the recipient of the prestigious nationwide Oskar Kolberg Award for services to folk culture (2020).