​

It was the golden time in swinging Warsaw between the wars, alive with cabaret and theatres, film, poetry and music, they had a lively circle of friends.
the outbreak of war destroyed this rich time of happiness.

He was the father Barbara never knew - she was 4 when in September '39 he left the house never to return.
the cruelty and hypocrisy of nuns contributed to Barbara's lifelong aversion

Barbara Levittoux was born in Warsaw on 29th December 1933, her parents were Wanda de domo Rybczyńska and Henryk Levittoux, the distinguished Warsaw surgeon, officer and pilot.

Barbara's parents met relatively late in life and it was a whirlwind romance, Henryk courted Wanda by taking her for air rides in open avionette, performing corkscrews and turns until his date was sick on his collar.

It was the golden time in swinging Warsaw between the wars, alive with cabaret and theatres, film, poetry and music, they had a lively circle of friends.

 Henryk was an Ordinator of the Sport Medicine Clinic at the Warsaw University and practiced privately in their flat at Polna 78. He took care of the Polish Olympic champion Janusz Kusociński and operated on his knee.

the outbreak of war destroyed this rich time of happiness.

 

He was the father Barbara never knew - she was 4 when in September '39 he left the house never to return.

Nothing was known about his fate for decades, last postcard came from the prisoners camp in Starobielsk - he was murdered with the bullet to the back of his head by ruzzians at the gaol in Charkiv.

Wanda suffered a deep shock and depression, and having to work long hours during the german ocupation, she sent Basia to the orphanage and school run by the Catholic nuns in Łódź. 

the cruelty and hypocrisy of nuns contributed to Barbara's lifelong aversion to church.

She got to know and like Łódź, a city with textile traditions and later often returned to stock up on her materials. 

after the war she lived with her mum in a little flat in Żoliborz, a part of Warsaw, went to Sempołowska Liceum - and discovered the Tatra mountains. 

they met with Jurek Świderski on the way to the Gąsienicowa valley shelter.

 Both were scouts and the songs sung by the campfires, being self reliant and inventive in the most challenging circumstances, friendship, fraternity, the ethos of fairness, decency, loyalty and scouts' ethics stayed with them for life - as well as being close to nature. They never stayed in a hotel, it was always tent.

he was a medical student, they climbed the high rocky Tatra mountains, both on Polish and Slovakian sides, with lines and hooks together, and after a few years got married. When their children came, the walks over to the Slovak side provided the much needed cotton baby layette clothes, unavailable in Polish communist reality.

 it was there also that they met and made lifelong friends with Domicella Bożekowska and Andrzej Goryński; years later they moved into the close neighbourhood with their friends on Zatrasie, a part of modern Żoliborz.

She studied painting at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Aleksander Kobzdej with the additional discipline of weaving and tapestry, at the class with Wojciech Sadley.

after the Academy she worked for a while at the Instytut Wzornictstwa, the Design Institute, and then joined the artist cooperative Wzór, all along working artistically, initially mostly on her painting, joining often the group trips with fellow students to beautiful destinations like Kazimierz, producing oil paintings of little simplified town houses in broken earthy reds and greens. 

she graduated in 1958, the year her daughter was born.

  Wzor was a cooperative of artists whos aim was to provide the grim and grey socialist market with some indivividually and artistically designed objects while earning money in a system that did not have an art market.. for years she would paint the kilometres of curtains with free "Picasso" design, later she designed and produced quantities of clothes, blouses, dresses for sale - to earn living

The raw materials for these were sourced in Łódź, bought in bulk in factory shops and hauled over on the train on day trips. Not only she "sewn up" the whole house - lampshades, bedclothes and curtains, but the off-cuts from sewing found way to her art (Ćma)

 

Gradually her palette in painting was becoming more sparse and limited to the shades of white, but more textural, often the paint was squeezed straight from the tube to shape cobblestones, or the texture of walls, for example. 

 

After marriage Basia and Jurek lived in Jurek's parents enormous flat at Nowogrodzka 3 m 12 in beautiful, pre-war, undamaged part of Central Warsaw. it wasn't a happy cohabitation, Barbara did not get on with her in-laws.Jerzy went to America to study cardiology at Harvard University and she was left alone with a baby in a cavernous, old fashioned flat she didn't like, with tiled stoves fired by coal that had to be carried from the cellar, and two eccentric old people each with their own tragic war luggage - older of 10 years son Bohdan - Danek - was murdered by the germans in the first days of the Uprising in a particularly sadistic way: captured with two other young boys they were tied, laid down driven over and crushed by the tank. 

The Mother and Father in law hardly spoke, Dr. Swiderski kept a live-in lover, assistant to his bacteriology lab and medical analysis studio on the premises.

One blessing was that the doctor Edward Świderski loved his little granddaughter very much and spent lots of time showing her the wonders of natural world, the butterfly emerging from paupae, reading the Polish classics to the toddler and even cooking - otherwise the little girl was left with nannies, the young women from the country in search of boyfriends, that changed over frequently - while Barbara worked.Soon Barbara managed to move her young family to the newly built quarter in familiar Żoliborz - Zatrasie.

The hastily constructed estates were the cement deserts in the fields of rubble, one house looking exactly like the other one, grey crude raw cement blocks without finish, paths in the rubble leading to school and shop.

a few blocks away Lilka - Domicella Bożekowska - was starting her amazing, against-all-odds forest garden on the ground floor of their sculpture studio flat.

But it was their own home, on the 4th floor with no lift, with balcony and central heating.

The old-fashioned palatial flat of the grandparents was lost to the aggressive communist council policy that would forcibly take over elegant places in central Warsaw giving them to communist activists. Jerzy's parents were soon ferried away to the old people's homes where they died. 

 Both were scouts and the songs sung by the campfires, being  reliant and inventive in the most challenging circumstances, friendship, fraternity, the ethos of fairness, , loyalty and scouts' ethics stayed withem for life - as well as being close to nature. They never stayed in a hotel, it was always tent.

Barbara Levittoux was born in Warsaw on 29th December 1933, her parents were Wanda de domo Rybczyńska and Henryk Levittoux, the distinguished Warsaw surgeon, officer and pilot.

Barbara's parents met relatively late in life and it was a whirlwind romance, Henryk courted Wanda by taking her for air rides in open avionette, performing corkscrews and turns until his date was sick on his collar.

It was the golden time in swinging Warsaw between the wars, alive with cabaret and theatres, film, poetry and music, they had a lively circle of friends.

 Henryk was an Ordinator of the Sport Medicine Clinic at the Warsaw University and practiced privately in their flat at Polna 78. He took care of the Polish Olympic champion Janusz Kusociński and operated on his knee.

the outbreak of war destroyed this rich time of happiness.

 

He was the father Barbara never knew - she was 4 when in September '39 he left the house never to return.

Nothing was known about his fate for decades, last postcard came from the prisoners camp in Starobielsk - he was murdered with the bullet to the back of his head by ruzzians at the gaol in Charkiv.

Wanda suffered a deep shock and depression, and having to work long hours during the german ocupation, she sent Basia to the orphanage and school run by the Catholic nuns in Łódź. 

the cruelty and hypocrisy of nuns contributed to Barbara's lifelong aversion to church.

She got to know and like Łódź, a city with textile traditions and later often returned to stock up on her materials. 

after the war she lived with her mum in a little flat in Żoliborz, a part of Warsaw, went to Sempołowska Liceum - and discovered the Tatra mountains. 

they met with Jurek Świderski on the way to the Gąsienicowa valley shelter.

 Both were scouts and the songs sung by the campfires, being self reliant and inventive in the most challenging circumstances, friendship, fraternity, the ethos of fairness, decency, loyalty and scouts' ethics stayed with them for life - as well as being close to nature. They never stayed in a hotel, it was always tent.

he was a medical student, they climbed the high rocky Tatra mountains, both on Polish and Slovakian sides, with lines and hooks together, and after a few years got married. When their children came, the walks over to the Slovak side provided the much needed cotton baby layette clothes, unavailable in Polish communist reality.

 it was there also that they met and made lifelong friends with Domicella Bożekowska and Andrzej Goryński; years later they moved into the close neighbourhood with their friends on Zatrasie, a part of modern Żoliborz.

She studied painting at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Aleksander Kobzdej with the additional discipline of weaving and tapestry, at the class with Wojciech Sadley.

after the Academy she worked for a while at the Instytut Wzornictstwa, the Design Institute, and then joined the artist cooperative Wzór, all along working artistically, initially mostly on her painting, joining often the group trips with fellow students to beautiful destinations like Kazimierz, producing oil paintings of little simplified town houses in broken earthy reds and greens. 

she graduated in 1958, the year her daughter was born.

  Wzor was a cooperative of artists whos aim was to provide the grim and grey socialist market with some indivividually and artistically designed objects while earning money in a system that did not have an art market.. for years she would paint the kilometres of curtains with free "Picasso" design, later she designed and produced quantities of clothes, blouses, dresses for sale - to earn living

The raw materials for these were sourced in Łódź, bought in bulk in factory shops and hauled over on the train on day trips. Not only she "sewn up" the whole house - lampshades, bedclothes and curtains, but the off-cuts from sewing found way to her art (Ćma)

 

Gradually her palette in painting was becoming more sparse and limited to the shades of white, but more textural, often the paint was squeezed straight from the tube to shape cobblestones, or the texture of walls, for example. 

 

After marriage Basia and Jurek lived in Jurek's parents enormous flat at Nowogrodzka 3 m 12 in beautiful, pre-war, undamaged part of Central Warsaw. it wasn't a happy cohabitation, Barbara did not get on with her in-laws.Jerzy went to America to study cardiology at Harvard University and she was left alone with a baby in a cavernous, old fashioned flat she didn't like, with tiled stoves fired by coal that had to be carried from the cellar, and two eccentric old people each with their own tragic war luggage - older of 10 years son Bohdan - Danek - was murdered by the germans in the first days of the Uprising in a particularly sadistic way: captured with two other young boys they were tied, laid down driven over and crushed by the tank. 

The Mother and Father in law hardly spoke, Dr. Swiderski kept a live-in lover, assistant to his bacteriology lab and medical analysis studio on the premises.

a few blocks away Lilka - Domicella Bożekowska - was starting her amazing, against-all-odds forest garden on the ground floor of their sculpture studio flat.

But it was their own home, on the 4th floor with no lft, with balcony and central heating.

The old-fashioned palatial flat of the grandparents was lost to the aggressive communist council policy that would forcibly take over elegant places in central Warsaw giving them to communist activists. Jerzy's parents were soon ferried away to the old people's homes where they died. 

Barbara for few years after, went back to the flat clearing/throwing out the lifelong collections of books, documents, artefacts, memories, medical equipment, butterflies collections - everything that belonged to a settled Warsaw medical family that were her in-laws.

there were few other historical properties, like house in Podkowa Leśna and the property in Modern nad Bugiem that she disposed of, without regret - such was her wrath.

he was a medical student, they climbed the high rocky Tatra mountains, both on Polish and Slovakian sides, with lines and hooks together, and after a few years got married. When their children came, the walks over to the Slovak side provided the much needed cotton baby layette clothes, unavailable in Polish communist reality.
 it was there also that they met and made lifelong friends with Domicella Bożekowska and Andrzej Goryński; years later they moved into the close neighbourhood with their friends on Zatrasie, a part of modern Żoliborz.
She studied painting at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Aleksander Kobzdej with the additional discipline of weaving and tapestry, at the class with Wojciech Sadley.
after the Academy she worked for a while at the Instytut Wzornictstwa, the Design Institute, and then joined the artist cooperative Wzór, all along working artistically, initially mostly on her painting, joining often the group trips with fellow students to beautiful destinations like Kazimierz, producing oil paintings of little simplified town houses in broken earthy reds and greens. 
she graduated in 1958, the year her daughter was born.
  Wzor was a cooperative of artists whos aim was to provide the grim and grey socialist market with some indivividually and artistically designed objects while earning money in a system that did not have an art market.. for years she would paint the kilometres of curtains with free "Picasso" design, later she designed and produced quantities of clothes, blouses, dresses for sale - to earn living
The raw materials for these were sourced in Łódź, bought in bulk in factory shops and hauled over on the train on day trips. Not only she "sewn up" the whole house - lampshades, bedclothes and curtains, but the off-cuts from sewing found way to her art (Ćma)

Gradually her palette in painting was becoming more sparse and limited to the shades of white, but more textural, often the paint was squeezed straight from the tube to shape cobblestones, or the texture of walls, for example. 
 
After marriage Basia and Jurek lived in Jurek's parents enormous flat at Nowogrodzka 3 m 12 in beautiful, pre-war, undamaged part of Central Warsaw. it wasn't a happy cohabitation, Barbara did not get on with her in-laws.Jerzy went to America to study cardiology at Harvard University and she was left alone with a baby in a cavernous, old fashioned flat she didn't like, with tiled stoves fired by coal that had to be carried from the cellar, and two eccentric old people each with their own tragic war luggage - older of 10 years son Bohdan - Danek - was murdered by the germans in the first days of the Uprising in a particularly sadistic way: captured with two other young boys they were tied, laid down driven over and crushed by the tank. 
The Mother and Father in law hardly spoke, Dr. Swiderski kept a live-in lover, assistant to his bacteriology lab and medical analysis studio on the premises.
One blessing was that the doctor Edward Świderski loved his little granddaughter very much and spent lots of time showing her the wonders of natural world, the butterfly emerging from paupae, reading the Polish classics to the toddler and even cooking - otherwise the little girl was left with nannies, the young women from the country in search of boyfriends, that changed over frequently - while Barbara worked.Soon Barbara managed to move her young family to the newly built quarter in familiar Żoliborz - Zatrasie.
The hastily constructed estates were the cement deserts in the fields of rubble, one house looking exactly like the other one, grey crude raw cement blocks without finish, paths in the rubble leading to school and shop.
a few blocks away Lilka - Domicella Bożekowska - was starting her amazing, against-all-odds forest garden on the ground floor of their sculpture studio flat.
But it was their own home, on the 4th floor with no lift, with balcony and central heating.
The old-fashioned palatial flat of the grandparents was lost to the aggressive communist council policy that would forcibly take over elegant places in central Warsaw giving them to communist activists. Jerzy's parents were soon ferried away to the old people's homes where they died. 
Barbara for few years after, went back to the flat clearing/throwing out the lifelong collections of books, documents, artefacts, memories, medical equipment, butterflies collections - everything that belonged to a settled Warsaw medical family that were her in-laws.
there were few other historical properties, like house in Podkowa Leśna and the property in Modern nad Bugiem that she disposed of, without regret - such was her wrath.
 

on 29th December 1933, her parents were Wanda de domo Rybczyńska and Henryk Levittoux, the distinguished Warsaw surgeon, officer and pilot.

Barbara's parents met relatively late in life and it was a whirlwind romance, Henryk courted Wanda by taking her for air rides in open avionette, performing corkscrews and turns until his date was sick on his collar.

It was the golden time in swinging Warsaw between the wars, alive with cabaret and theatres, film, poetry and music, they had a lively circle of friends.

 Henryk was an Ordinator of the Sport Medicine Clinic at the Warsaw University and practiced privately in their flat at Polna 78. He took care of the Polish Olympic champion Janusz Kusociński and operated on his knee.

the outbreak of war destroyed this rich time of happiness.

 

He was the father Barbara never knew - she was 4 when in September '39 he left the house never to return.

Nothing was known about his fate for decades, last postcard came from the prisoners camp in Starobielsk - he was murdered with the bullet to the back of his head by ruzzians at the gaol in Charkiv.

Wanda suffered a deep shock and depression, and having to work long hours during the german ocupation, she sent Basia to the orphanage and school run by the Catholic nuns in Łódź. 

the cruelty and hypocrisy of nuns contributed to Barbara's lifelong aversion to church.

She got to know and like Łódź, a city with textile traditions and later often returned to stock up on her materials. 

after the war she lived with her mum in a little flat in Żoliborz, a part of Warsaw, went to Sempołowska Liceum - and discovered the Tatra mountains. 

they met with Jurek Świderski on the way to the Gąsienicowa valley shelter.

 Both were scouts and the songs sung by the campfires, being self reliant and inventive in the most challenging circumstances, friendship, fraternity, the ethos of fairness, decency, loyalty and scouts' ethics stayed with them for life - as well as being close to nature. They never stayed in a hotel, it was always tent.

he was a medical student, they climbed the high rocky Tatra mountains, both on Polish and Slovakian sides, with lines and hooks together, and after a few years got married. When their children came, the walks over to the Slovak side provided the much needed cotton baby layette clothes, unavailable in Polish communist reality.

 it was there also that they met and made lifelong friends with Domicella Bożekowska and Andrzej Goryński; years later they moved into the close neighbourhood with their friends on Zatrasie, a part of modern Żoliborz.

She studied painting at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Aleksander Kobzdej with the additional discipline of weaving and tapestry, at the class with Wojciech Sadley.

after the Academy she worked for a while at the Instytut Wzornictstwa, the Design Institute, and then joined the artist cooperative Wzór, all along working artistically, initially mostly on her painting, joining often the group trips with fellow students to beautiful destinations like Kazimierz, producing oil paintings of little simplified town houses in broken earthy reds and greens. 

she graduated in 1958, the year her daughter was born.

  Wzor was a cooperative of artists whos aim was to provide the grim and grey socialist market with some indivividually and artistically designed objects while earning money in a system that did not have an art market.. for years she would paint the kilometres of curtains with free "Picasso" design, later she designed and produced quantities of clothes, blouses, dresses for sale - to earn living

The raw materials for these were sourced in Łódź, bought in bulk in factory shops and hauled over on the train on day trips. Not only she "sewn up" the whole house - lampshades, bedclothes and curtains, but the off-cuts from sewing found way to her art (Ćma)

 

Gradually her palette in painting was becoming more sparse and limited to the shades of white, but more textural, often the paint was squeezed straight from the tube to shape cobblestones, or the texture of walls, for example. 

 

After marriage Basia and Jurek lived in Jurek's parents enormous flat at Nowogrodzka 3 m 12 in beautiful, pre-war, undamaged part of Central Warsaw. it wasn't a happy cohabitation, Barbara did not get on with her in-laws.Jerzy went to America to study cardiology at Harvard University and she was left alone with a baby in a cavernous, old fashioned flat she didn't like, with tiled stoves fired by coal that had to be carried from the cellar, and two eccentric old people each with their own tragic war luggage - older of 10 years son Bohdan - Danek - was murdered by the germans in the first days of the Uprising in a particularly sadistic way: captured with two other young boys they were tied, laid down driven over and crushed by the tank. 

The Mother and Father in law hardly spoke, Dr. Swiderski kept a live-in lover, assistant to his bacteriology lab and marBsaBarbara Levittoux was born in Warsaw on 29th December 1933, her parents were Wanda de domo Rybczyńska and Henryk Levittoux, the distinguished Warsaw surgeon, officer and pilot.

Barbara's parents met relatively late in life and it was a whirlwind romance, Henryk courted Wanda by taking her for air rides in open avionette, performing corkscrews and turns until his date was sick on his collar.

It was the golden time in swinging Warsaw between the wars, alive with cabaret and theatres, film, poetry and music, they had a lively circle of friends.

 Henryk was an Ordinator of the Sport Medicine Clinic at the Warsaw University and practiced privately in their flat at Polna 78. He took care of the Polish Olympic champion Janusz Kusociński and operated on his knee.

the outbreak of war destroyed this rich time of happiness.

 

He was the father Barbara never knew - she was 4 when in September '39 he left the house never to return.

Nothing was known about his fate for decades, last postcard came from the prisoners camp in Starobielsk - he was murdered with the bullet to the back of his head by ruzzians at the gaol in Charkiv.

Wanda suffered a deep shock and depression, and having to work long hours during the german ocupation, she sent Basia to the orphanage and school run by the Catholic nuns in Łódź. 

the cruelty and hypocrisy of nuns contributed to Barbara's lifelong aversion to church.

She got to know and like Łódź, a city with textile traditions and later often returned to stock up on her materials. 

after the war she lived with her mum in a little flat in Żoliborz, a part of Warsaw, went to Sempołowska Liceum - and discovered the Tatra mountains. 

they met with Jurek Świderski on the way to the Gąsienicowa valley shelter.

 Both were scouts and the songs sung by the campfires, being self reliant and inventive in the most challenging circumstances, friendship, fraternity, the ethos of fairness, decency, loyalty and scouts' ethics stayed with them for life - as well as being close to nature. They never stayed in a hotel, it was always tent.

he was a medical student, they climbed the high rocky Tatra mountains, both on Polish and Slovakian sides, with lines and hooks together, and after a few years got married. When their children came, the walks over to the Slovak side provided the much needed cotton baby layette clothes, unavailable in Polish communist reality.

 it was there also that they met and made lifelong friends with Domicella Bożekowska and Andrzej Goryński; years later they moved into the close neighbourhood with their friends on Zatrasie, a part of modern Żoliborz.

She studied painting at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Aleksander Kobzdej with the additional discipline of weaving and tapestry, at the class with Wojciech Sadley.

after the Academy she worked for a while at the Instytut Wzornictstwa, the Design Institute, and then joined the artist cooperative Wzór, all along working artistically, initially mostly on her painting, joining often the group trips with fellow students to beautiful destinations like Kazimierz, producing oil paintings of little simplified town houses in broken earthy reds and greens. 

she graduated in 1958, the year her daughter was born.

  Wzor was a cooperative of artists whos aim was to provide the grim and grey socialist market with some indivividually and artistically designed objects while earning money in a system that did not have an art market.. for years she would paint the kilometres of curtains with free "Picasso" design, later she designed and produced quantities of clothes, blouses, dresses for sale - to earn living

The raw materials for these were sourced in Łódź, bought in bulk in factory shops and hauled over on the train on day trips. Not only she "sewn up" the whole house - lampshades, bedclothes and curtains, but the off-cuts from sewing found way to her art (Ćma)

 

Gradually her palette in painting was becoming more sparse and limited to the shades of white, but more textural, often the paint was squeezed straight from the tube to shape cobblestones, or the texture of walls, for example. 

 

After marriage Basia and Jurek lived in Jurek's parents enormous flat at Nowogrodzka 3 m 12 in beautiful, pre-war, undamaged part of Central Warsaw. it wasn't a happy cohabitation, Barbara did not get on with her in-laws.Jerzy went to America to study cardiology at Harvard University and she was left alone with a baby in a cavernous, old fashioned flat she didn't like, with tiled stoves fired by coal that had to be carried from the cellar, and two eccentric old people each with their own tragic war luggage - older of 10 years son Bohdan - Danek - was murdered by the germans in the first days of the Uprising in a particularly sadistic way: captured with two other young boys they were tied, laid down driven over and crushed by the tank. 

The Mother and Father in law hardly spoke, Dr. Swiderski kept a live-in lover, assistant to his bacterBarbara Levittoux was born in Warsaw on 29th December 1933, her parents were Wanda de domo Rybczyńska and Henryk Levittoux, the distinguished Warsaw surgeon, officer and pilot.

Barbara's parents met relatively late in life and it was a whirlwind romance, Henryk courted Wanda by taking her for air rides in open avionette, performing corkscrews and turns until his date was sick on his collar.

It was the golden time in swinging Warsaw between the wars, alive with cabaret and theatres, film, poetry and music, they had a lively circle of friends.

 Henryk was an Ordinator of the Sport Medicine Clinic at the Warsaw University and practiced privately in their flat at Polna 78. He took care of the Polish Olympic champion Janusz Kusociński and operated on his knee.

the outbreak of war destroyed this rich time of happiness.

 

He was the father Barbara never knew - she was 4 when in September '39 he left the house never to return.

Nothing was known about his fate for decades, last postcard came from the prisoners camp in Starobielsk - he was murdered with the bullet to the back of his head by ruzzians at the gaol in Charkiv.

Wanda suffered a deep shock and depression, and having to work long hours during the german ocupation, she sent Basia to the orphanage and school run by the Catholic nuns in Łódź. 

the cruelty and hypocrisy of nuns contributed to Barbara's lifelong aversion to church.

She got to know and like Łódź, a city with textile traditions and later often returned to stock up on her materials. 

after the war she lived with her mum in a little flat in Żoliborz, a part of Warsaw, went to Sempołowska Liceum - and discovered the Tatra mountains. 

they met with Jurek Świderski on the way to the Gąsienicowa valley shelter.

 Both were scouts and the songs sung by the campfires, being self reliant and inventive in the most challenging circumstances, friendship, fraternity, the ethos of fairness, decency, loyalty and scouts' ethics stayed with them for life - as well as being close to nature. They never stayed in a hotel, it was always tent.

he was a medical student, they climbed the high rocky Tatra mountains, both on Polish and Slovakian sides, with lines and hooks together, and after a few years got married. When their children came, the walks over to the Slovak side provided the much needed cotton baby layette clothes, unavailable in Polish communist reality.

 it was there also that they met and made lifelong friends with Domicella Bożekowska and Andrzej Goryński; years later they moved into the close neighbourhood with their friends on Zatrasie, a part of modern Żoliborz.

She studied painting at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Aleksander Kobzdej with the additional discipline of weaving and tapestry, at the class with Wojciech Sadley.

after the Academy she worked for a while at the Instytut Wzornictstwa, the Design Institute, and then joined the artist cooperative Wzór, all along working artistically, initially mostly on her painting, joining often the group trips with fellow students to beautiful destinations like Kazimierz, producing oil paintings of little simplified town houses in broken earthy reds and greens. 

she graduated in 1958, the year her daughter was born.

  Wzor was a cooperative of artists whos aim was to provide the grim and grey socialist market with some indivividually and artistically designed objects while earning money in a system that did not have an art market.. for years she would paint the kilometres of curtains with free "Picasso" design, later she designed and produced quantities of clothes, blouses, dresses for sale - to earn living

The raw materials for these were sourced in Łódź, bought in bulk in factory shops and hauled over on the train on day trips. Not only she "sewn up" the whole house - lampshades, bedclothes and curtains, but the off-cuts from sewing found way to her art (Ćma)

 

Gradually her palette in painting was becoming more sparse and limited to the shades of white, but more textural, often the paint was squeezed straight from the tube to shape cobblestones, or the texture of walls, for example. 

 

After marriage Basia and Jurek lived in Jurek's parents enormous flat at Nowogrodzka 3 m 12 in beautiful, pre-war, undamaged part of Central Warsaw. it wasn't a happy cohabitation, Barbara did not get on with her in-laws.Jerzy went to America to study cardiology at Harvard University and she was left alone with a baby in a cavernous, old fashioned flat she didn't like, with tiled stoves fired by coal that had to be carried from the cellar, and two eccentric old people each with their own tragic war luggage - older of 10 years son Bohdan - Danek - was murdered by the germans in the first days of the Uprising in a particularly sadistic way: captured with two other young boys they were tied, laid down driven over and crushed by the tank. 

The Mother and Father in law hardly spoke, Dr. Swiderski kept a live-in lover, assistant to his bacteriology lab and miology lab and mw on 29th December 1933,  her parents were Wanda de domo Rybczyńska and Henryk Levittoux, the distinguished Warsaw surgeon, officer and pilot.

Barbara's parents met relatively late in life and it was a whirlwind romance, Henryk courted Wanda by taking her for air rides in open avionette, performing corkscrews and turns until  his date was sick on his collar.

It was the golden time in swinging Warsaw between the wars, alive with cabaret and theatres, film, poetry and music, they had a lively circle of friends.

 Henryk was an Ordinator of the Sport Medicine Clinic at the Warsaw University and practiced privately in their flat at Polna 78.  He took care of the Polish Olympic champion Janusz Kusociński and operated on his knee.

the outbreak of war destroyed this rich time of happiness.

 

He was the father Barbara never knew - she was 4 when in September '39 he left the house never to return.

Nothing was known about his fate for decades, last postcard came from the prisoners camp in Starobielsk - he was murdered with the bullet to the back of his head by ruzzians at the gaol in Charkiv.

Wanda suffered a deep shock and depression, and having to work long hours during the german ocupation, she sent Basia to the orphanage and school run by the Catholic nuns in Łódź. 

the cruelty and hypocrisy of nuns contributed to Barbara's lifelong aversion to church.

She got to know and like Łódź, a city with textile traditions and later often returned to stock up on her materials. 

after the war she lived with her mum in a little flat in Żoliborz, a part of Warsaw, went to Sempołowska Liceum -  and discovered the Tatra mountains. 

they met with Jurek Świderski on the way to the Gąsienicowa valley shelter.

 Both were scouts and the songs sung by the campfires,  being self reliant and inventive in the most challenging circumstances, friendship, fraternity, the ethos of fairness, decency, loyalty and scouts' ethics stayed with them for life - as well as being close to  nature. They never stayed in a hotel, it was always tent.

he was a medical student, they climbed the high rocky Tatra mountains, both on Polish and Slovakian sides, with lines and hooks together, and after a few years got married. When their children came, the walks over to the Slovak side provided the much needed cotton baby layette clothes, unavailable in Polish communist reality.

 it was there also that they met and made lifelong friends with Domicella Bożekowska and Andrzej Goryński; years later they moved into the close neighbourhood with their friends on Zatrasie, a part of modern Żoliborz.

She studied painting at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Aleksander Kobzdej with the additional discipline of weaving and tapestry, at the class with Wojciech Sadley.

after the Academy she worked for a while at the Instytut Wzornictstwa, the Design Institute, and then joined the artist cooperative Wzór, all along working artistically, initially mostly on her painting, joining often the group trips with fellow students to beautiful destinations like Kazimierz, producing oil paintings of little simplified town houses in broken earthy reds and greens. 

she graduated in 1958, the year her daughter was born.

  Wzor was a cooperative of artists whos aim was to provide the grim and grey socialist market with some indivividually and artistically designed objects while earning money in a system that did not have an art market.. for years she would paint the kilometres of curtains with free "Picasso" design, later she designed and produced quantities of clothes, blouses, dresses for sale - to earn living

The raw materials for these were sourced in Łódź,  bought in bulk in factory shops and hauled over on the train on day trips. Not only she "sewn up" the whole house - lampshades, bedclothes and curtains,  but the off-cuts from sewing found way to her art (Ćma)

 

Gradually her palette in painting was becoming more sparse and limited to the shades of white, but more textural, often the paint was squeezed straight from the tube to shape cobblestones, or the texture of walls, for example. 

 

After marriage Basia and Jurek lived in Jurek's parents enormous flat at Nowogrodzka 3 m 12 in beautiful, pre-war, undamaged part of Central Warsaw. it wasn't a happy cohabitation, Barbara did not get on with her in-laws.Jerzy went to America to study cardiology at Harvard University and she was left alone with a baby in a cavernous, old fashioned flat she didn't like, with tiled stoves fired by coal that had to be carried from the cellar, and two eccentric old people each with their own  tragic war luggage - older of 10 years son Bohdan - Danek - was murdered by the germans in the first days of the Uprising in a particularly sadistic way: captured with two other young boys they were tied, laid down driven over and crushed by the tank. 

The Mother and Father in law hardly spoke, Dr. Swiderski kept a live-in lover, assistant to his bacteriology lab and medical analysis studio on the premises.

One blessing was that the doctor Edward Świderski loved his little granddaughter very much and spent lots of time showing her the wonders of natural world, the butterfly emerging from paupae, reading the Polish classics to the toddler and even cooking - otherwise the little girl was left with nannies, the young women from the country in search of boyfriends, that changed over frequently - while Barbara worked.Soon Barbara managed to move her young family to the newly built quarter in familiar Żoliborz - Zatrasie.

The hastily constructed estates were the cement deserts in the fields of rubble, one house looking exactly like the other one, grey crude raw cement blocks without finish, paths in the rubble leading to school and shop.

a few blocks away Lilka - Domicella Bożekowska - was starting her amazing, against-all-odds forest garden on the ground floor of their sculpture studio flat.

But it was their own home, on the 4th floor with no lift, with balcony and central heating.

The old-fashioned palatial flat of the grandparents was lost to the aggressive communist council policy that would forcibly take over elegant places in central Warsaw giving them to communist activists.  Jerzy's parents were soon ferried away to the old people's homes where they died. 

Barbara for few years after, went back to the flat clearing/throwing out the lifelong collections of books, documents, artefacts, memories, medical equipment, butterflies collections - everything that belonged to a settled Warsaw medical family that were her in-laws.

there were few other historical properties, like house in Podkowa Leśna and the property in Modern nad Bugiem that she disposed of, without regret - such was her wrath.