Olgierd Szlekys

Lifetime

1908–1980

Country

Poland

Manufacturers

Ład

Olgierd Jan Szlekys was born in 1908 in Kalisz. He studied furniture-making in Leningrad, and after returning to Poland studied interior architecture in Poznań (until 1931) and at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts (diploma in 1939). From 1935, he was a member of Spółdzielnia Artystów „Ład” (the Ład Artists’ Cooperative), where he headed the cabinetmaking workshop during 1936–1939.

During the war, he ran a design partnership with Władysław Wincze, designing interiors and furniture; works created at that time included the ‘Sarenka’ stool (1942–1943). After the war, he reactivated Spółdzielnia Artystów „Ład” and was its director in 1946–1948. Together with Wincze, he created the so-called Ład style and also designed furniture for children.

He designed the representative interiors of Polish embassies in Stockholm and Mexico (1949), rooms at the National Library (1966), and other institutional interiors. He died in 1980 in Warsaw.

In 1950, he left Ład and called for the cooperative’s dissolution. The stool with a triangular backrest (1941) and the ‘Sarenka’ stool, designed with Wincze, were produced by Ład in 1946–1965; both are in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw, as is his ‘corset’ armchair. In 1957, he was commissioner of the 2nd National Exhibition of Interior Architecture at Zachęta, and in 1973 received a special honorary award at a Cepelia exhibition as a co-founder of Ład.