Polish sculptor Olga Niewska participated in three consecutive Olympic Games 1928-36. All the works belong to her group of works on sport from the late 1920s and early 1930s: In 1928, she exhibited four statues, listed in the respective catalog as Female Archer (Łuczniczka), The Discus Thrower (Dyskobol), The Swimmer (Pływak) and The Shooter (Strzelec) (all from 1927). Her Female Archer had won the internal Polish contest for female artists. In 1932 followed The Runner (Biegacz) and in 1936 the 1.80 m tall The Athlete (Atleta). All of them were bronze figures. Niewska studied at the Kyiv School of Painting and then moved to Krákow in 1919 to the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1923 she again moved to Warszawa and then to Paris, where she lived from 1926-28 and worked with Antoine Bourdelle. She earned popularity with her portraits of celebrities. In the 1930s she produced monumental portrait sculptures, but also sculpted sports figures and medals. As with the topics, she was also very versatile regarding materials and worked in bronze, plaster, cement, stone and ceramic. In 1939, her studio was destroyed during one of the first bombing raids in Warsaw. In 1943 Niewska fell ill and died soon thereafter from complications after an operation.
Poland