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Paul Maximilien Landowski (1 June 1875 – 31 March 1961) was a French monument sculptor of Polish descent. His best-known work isChrist the Redeemer inRio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Landowski was born inParis to a Polish father, refugee of theJanuary Uprising, and a French mother: Julie Vieuxtemps, daughter ofHenri Vieuxtemps. He studied at theAcadémie Julian,[1] before graduating from theÉcole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts; he won thePrix de Rome in 1900 with his statue ofDavid, and went on to a fifty-five-year career. He produced over thirty-five monuments in the city of Paris and twelve more in the surrounding area. Among these is theArt Deco figure ofSt. Geneviève on the 1928Pont de la Tournelle.
DuringWorld War I, he fought in theBattle of the Somme among others, which led to his being awarded the Citation of the Order of the Artillery Brigade and theCroix de Guerre.[2] The war greatly impacted his art, and soon after the Armistice, he createdLes Fantomes, the French Memorial to theSecond Battle of the Marne which stands upon the Butte de Chalmont in Northern France, and the two majorMonuments aux Morts inFrench North Africa, respectively known asLe Pavois inAlgiers (concealed since 1978 in theMemorial to the Liberation of Algeria) and themonument à la victoire et à la paix inCasablanca (originally on today'sMohammed V Square, relocated to France in 1961 and re-erected in 1965 inSenlis).[citation needed]
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Landowski is widely known for the 1931Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro: this project was a collaboration with civil engineerHeitor da Silva Costa and architect and sculptorGheorghe Leonida. Some sources indicate Landowski designed Christ's head and hands, but it was Leonida who created the head when asked by Landowski.
His statue entitled "The Boxer" won a gold medal at theart competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics for Sculpture, which was part of theart competitions at the summer Olympics from 1912 to 1952.[3] The medal accelerated his fame and resulted in high-profile commissions around the world.[4] From 1933 to 1937, he was Director of theFrench Academy in Rome. He also served as an art–juror withFlorence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding thePrix Blumenthal, a grant awarded between 1919–1954 to young French painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers and musicians.[5]
Landowski married Geneviève Nénot in 1907 and had two children: the painterNadine Landowski (1908–1943) and agricultural engineer and Legion d’Honneur Jean Maximilian Landowski (1911-1944), both of whom died during World War II. Geneviève died in 1912, and he married Amélie Cruppi, who gave him two more children: composerMarcel Landowski (1915–1999), and pianist and painterFrançoise Landowski-Caillet (1917–2007).[6]
After a heart attack in 1961, Landowski died inBoulogne-Billancourt, a suburb of Paris, where a museum dedicated to his work has over 100 works on display.[7][8]
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 | 1928 Amsterdam | Sculpture |
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