Witold Mars was born in Rząsna Polska, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine) in 1908. He studied at the art academies in Kraków and Warsaw before exhibiting in Poland and Sweden. During the Second World War, he served with the Polish forces and later settled in Britain, then in the United States. His work ranged from illustration to portraiture and folklore scenes, as well as delicate, humorous watercolours and vivid wartime imagery.
Artist Witold Mars was born in Rząsna Polska, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine). He came from an educated family; his grandfather, Antoni Józef Mars, was a prominent jurist and writer, and his mother, Stefania née Dunikowska, a children's author and illustrator, whose second husband was the historian Damian Wandycz. Mars’s sister, Anna Maria, would become an art historian and Byzantinologist, and his half-brother, Piotr Wandycz, a noted historian of Eastern Europe. Mars showed a precocious artistic talent, illustrating one of his mother’s children’s books at the age of nine. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków from 1927, then continued his training at the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw, graduating in 1934. His education combined rigorous academic discipline with exposure to Polish modernist currents. In the 1930s, he exhibited widely in Poland, including a solo exhibition in Lwów in 1936, and was involved with the avant-garde group Zespół. Notably, he also exhibited in Sweden during this period, expanding his early international exposure. Mars' early and mid-career works often explored theatrical and intimate scenes rendered in a stylised figurative idiom. Paintings such as Seated Woman with Flowers, Musicians, and Carnival (private collections) depict women, performers, and everyday rituals with a folk sensibility and symbolic undertones.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, Mars joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West. He fought in France and was then evacuated with the Polish army to the UK, eventually settling in Scotland. His experience as a soldier deeply informed his artistic output during the war years. In 1941, while stationed in Scotland, he painted a portrait of Marshal Józef Piłsudski—now held by the Józef Piłsudski Institute in London. He also created numerous pencil and watercolour works illustrating Polish soldiers’ lives. Mars became an active figure in wartime and postwar exhibitions across the UK. In 1943, his work was included in Works by Allied Artists at the Bank Field Museum in Halifax. The exhibition brought together artists from Allied nations, including Polish painters, Adam Turyn and Marek Żuławski. Art critic Jack Lindley praised the Polish participants for their natural sense of colour, shaped by ‘a country of fine, colourful peasant costume and domestic art’. He singled out Mars’s still-life as ‘further evidence of this’, placing it alongside Turyn’s portrait and Żuławski’s expressive nude as key highlights of the show (Halifax Evening Courier 1943, p. 3). Another significant exhibition followed in 1944: War Through Polish Eyes at the Rochdale Art Gallery, featuring six Polish soldier-artists then serving in a mechanised cavalry brigade, including, Andrzej Wart, Aleksander Żyw, Antoni Wasilewski, and Zygmunt Haupt. The Rochdale Observer praised the show for its vitality and individual character, and noted Mars’ contribution of ‘many admirable pencil drawings and four water colours’ which brought ‘a touch of attractive levity’ to the exhibition. ‘Mars caricatures us in the most delicate water-colour, but with a deliciously satirical eye’, the reviewer observed, adding that more of his work would have been welcome (Rochdale Observer 1944, p. 4). Postwar, in 1947, he exhibited at the Polish Art Exhibition at 71a Castle Street in Edinburgh, and his work was singled out by The Scotsman, alongside artists M. Janikowski and A. Wasilewski ( The Scotsman 1947, p. 3). Mars’s participation in this and similar exhibitions—including those organised by the Society of Scottish Artists, Royal Scottish Academy, and the London Group—reflected his standing in both émigré and British modernist circles. He was also a member of the Society of Polish Artists in Great Britain. His subject matter in the UK remained wide-ranging. In addition to war-related imagery, he painted portraits, genre scenes, and still-lifes with a clear, modernist sensibility. One notable example, Polish Soldier (Self-Portrait) from c.1940–41, is now housed in the Biggar & Upper Clydesdale Museum in Scotland. He also produced a powerful series of prints on the Normandy landings, now preserved at the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London.
In 1951–52, Mars immigrated to the United States, where he began a highly productive second career as an illustrator, contributing artwork to children’s and young adult books. His debut in American publishing came in 1952 with Reba Mirsky’s Thirty-One Brothers and Sisters. Over the next decades, Mars illustrated both fiction and nonfiction titles, including books on military history, humorous stories, historical fiction, and contemporary novels. A major retrospective was held in 1990 at the Kosciuszko Foundation in New York, organised by the Lipert Gallery. Witold Mars died in New York, USA on 9 September 1985. In the UK public domain, his work is represented in the collections of the Biggar & Upper Clydesdale Museum and Paxton House, among others. Mars’ papers, including illustrations and correspondence, are held at the University of Minnesota’s Kerlan Collection.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Witold Mars]
Publications related to [Witold Mars] in the Ben Uri Library