Passion, heat and the soul of the East in the paintings of the "Master of the Sun rays" Adam Joints

The orientalist artist Adam Styka refers to those people who once saw the East and forever preserved it in their soul. The paintings of this master are filled with the scorching sun, hot sand and no less sultry women brought up by the desert. Love, passion, joy and sadness — The Joint filled his works with vivid emotions and that's why his characters are so photographically natural.

Adam Styka was born in 1890 in Poland, in the city of Kielce, Kielce province, which was then part of the Russian Empire. The father of the family, Jan Styka, was a famous artist and instilled a love of painting in his sons, the elder Tadeusz and the younger Adam. It was he who taught the boy to mix paints and apply strokes on canvas, and most importantly — to look at the world with a special look of the creator.

From 1908 to 1912, Adam Styka honed his talent in Paris, at the French Academy of Fine Arts. In 1914, the First World War began and the young artist went to the front as a volunteer. In the war, the Joint showed himself to be a brave warrior, but at the same time he did not forget for a minute about his vocation in this world. Adam devoted his rare free moments to drawing, and soon he was known in the troops as an excellent portraitist.

The artist ended the war as a knight of the Order of Merit, which helped him obtain French citizenship. In addition, Adam Joint was encouraged with a sabbatical, allocating money for a trip to the French colonies of North Africa. This trip, which lasted several months, changed the master forever and he became a passionate orientalist.

The joint has developed its own individual style, suitable only for paintings from the life of the East. The artist's paintings are filled with shades of yellow and red, as well as the play of glare, so they seem thoroughly warmed by the blazing sun. For this manner, the artist was nicknamed "The Master of the sun rays".

The people in the paintings of the Joints seem to be sensualists, but this is exactly how the painter saw love on the banks of the Nile, and this is not lust, but passion, which a person from cold Europe cannot always understand.

In 1950 Adam Styka left France and moved to the USA. In the last years of his life, the African theme almost disappeared from the master's work — he painted paintings from the life of the Wild West, with cowboys and prairies, as well as works on religious themes.

Adam Styka died on September 23, 1959 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, USA.

And here is the artist himself:

The work of Alam Joints echoes the legacy of another European painter, whose heart was captivated by the East — Nasreddin Dine.