Flowerpiece, 1945

Aleksander Żyw was one of the most important émigré painters to settle in Scotland during the twentieth century, bringing to post-war Scottish art a distinctive European modernism shaped by war, exile and a lifelong engagement with the Mediterranean world. Born in Lida, Poland, in 1905, he moved to Warsaw as a child and enrolled at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts in 1926, where he received a rigorous academic training grounded in drawing and traditional painting techniques.