Gets, Lev

Gets, Lev [Gec; Getz, Leon], b 13 April 1896 in Lviv, d 16 December 1971 in Cracow. Painter and graphic artist. Gets studied with Ivan Levynsky and Oleksa Novakivsky in Lviv and at the Cracow Academy of Art (1919–23). He was a member of the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists, and exhibited with this group in Lviv, Prague, Berlin, and Rome. After the Second World War, Gets became a professor at the Academy of Art in Cracow (1950–8). His earlier works include [Sich] Rifleman's Anthology 1915–18 (over 500 drawings and sketches), a cycle of drawings from his stay in the Polish internment camp at Dąbie, many drawings of Sianik, and over 100 works depicting the life of the Lemkos. His Cracow period includes almost 500 drawings of the old architecture of Cracow. Now housed in the city's historical museum, 100 of these were published as an album titled Dawne dziedzińce i podwórza Krakowa w rysunkach Leona Getza (Old Courts and Courtyards of Cracow in the Drawings of Leon Getz, 1958). The influence of symbolism imparts to his realistic paintings and drawings a surreal quality. Gets is the subject of a monograph by Pavlo Kovzhun (1939).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]