Tadeusz Znicz-Muszyński was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1921. Arriving in Scotland with the Polish 'Anders' army in exile in 1947, he studied design at the Sir John Cass School of Arts and Crafts, London from 1948–52. An abstract painter, Znicz-Muszyński was a core member of the Polish art collective, Group 49, and later an art teacher at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Secondary School, London.
Painter and teacher, Tadeusz Znicz-Muszyński was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1921. Son of an architect, he was captured by the occupying German army, but escaped while en route to a labour camp in November 1939, eventually making his way back to Warsaw. He fought during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, but after the city capitulated, he was imprisoned in Germany. Seven months later he was freed by the Second United States Army, as the war drew to a close. He subsequently joined the Third Carpathian Division of the Polish II Corps (the so-called Anders’ Army) in Italy, where he tried to evade military service in order to pursue an artistic career, and eventually studied painting at the University of Bologna from 1945–47 after the end of the war. Upon graduation he immediately arrived as an exile in Scotland with fellow Polish painter and founder of the Polish School of Painting and Graphic Design in exile, Marian Bohusz-Szyszko, and studied with the School when it relocated to Kingwood Common (near Reading) from 1947–48. He then obtained his National Design Diploma from Sir John Cass School of Arts and Crafts, in east London from 1948–52.
In 1949 Znicz-Muszyński joined Bohusz-Szyszko’s Grupa 49 (Group 49), an association with 14 artists that succeeded the short-lived Young Artists Association (YAA), and which comprised Anders’ artists such as Kazimierz Dzwig, Ryszard Demel, Leon Piesowocki, Stanisław Frenkiel, and others. Interested in a more modern and progressive approach than the YAA, for ten years Grupa 49 exhibited in various London locations, ranging from the Polish YMCA Club to the newly established Grabowski Gallery in London’s South Kensington, founded by exiled Pole, Mateusz Grabowski. Znicz-Muszynski was included in the 10th anniversary exhibition, Group 49, at Grabowski Gallery from 1959–60, representing ‘the main core of Polish art in Great Britain’ (APA: History). Having developed ties with the Grabowski Gallery, it was there that Znicz-Muszyński held a solo exhibition, Exhibition of Paintings by Tadeusz Znicz-Muszynski, in 1962. He also exhibited with the Free Painters and Sculptors (FPS), an artist -led organisation established in 1952, which showed twice annually in London gallery spaces.
Znicz-Muszyński’s paintings, like many of those who were part of Grupa 49, were abstract in their composition. He was nevertheless an ‘unusual’ artist ‘in that his spiky, landscape-inspired work, rather than looking to Polish culture, reflects the influence of modern British artists of the mid-century, such as Graham Sutherland’ (Dickson, 2020). Subsequent to the Group’s disbandment, he was a teacher, leading the art department at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Secondary School, London from 1962. He held a solo exhibition at Barrett Gallery in London in 1966, as well as a solo municipal travelling exhibition that toured the south of England from 1971–72. He was a member of the Association of Polish Artists in Great Britain (APA) and won the Polish Art Council in Great Britain gold medal in 1979. His paintings were variously signed 'Znicz' or 'Muszyński'.
Tadeusz Znicz-Muszyński died in London, England in 1988. His Pinowy Ruch (Vertical Movement) (c. 1950s, POSK Art Collection, London) was shown in Ben Uri’s survey exhibition, Art Out of the Bloodlands: A Century of Polish Art in Britain, in 2017. In the UK public domain is work is held in the POSK Collection, while his painting, Forms against Light (date unknown), is held in the Bournemouth & Poole College Collection.