Tomasz Rut (Born 1961) Polish/American, Large Signed and Numbered Giclee on Canvas. Depicts a classical beauty from behind, in the midst of lamenting some unfathomable cruelty of the gods. Title: "Deianira," named after one of the loves of Hercules in Greek mythology. Numbered 84/200 in gold ink bottom left. Signed in gold ink bottom right. 

Overall Size: 43 x 37 in. 

Sight Size: 29 1/4 x 23 1/4 in. 

Tomasz Rut was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1961. Encouraged by his mother, a painter trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Rut was introduced to the Pompeian frescoes and the magnificent history of the Renaissance and the Baroque periods as a child. He showed an early aptitude for art, copying Old Master works in charcoal and pencil drawings in his early teens, and by his late teens he had taught himself to recreate classical paintings and sculptures in oils, murals, and graphic works. His community, amazed at his skill, pooled their resources to help him travel to America, where he trained for two semesters at the Pratt Institute in New York. He returned to Poland to study art conservation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, earning a B.A. in Chemistry and Art History and an M.A. in Conservation. Finally fleeing Soviet rule for good in the mid 1980s, he took a job in art conservation for the Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina, a home owned by the Vanderbilt family with furnishings dating back to the 15th Century. He traveled the east coast restoring large scale murals in museums and mansions for the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., the New Jersey State House in Trenton, the Gusman Center for the Arts, and Vizcaya Museum in Miami. Rut began to paint again during this time, creating his own classical masterpieces with a superficial patina or aging made using a variety of transparent and semi-transparent glazes. Since the 2000s he has worked from his home studio in Florida, producing images that pay homage to the masters of the high Renaissance while simultaneously creating a place for himself in contemporary art, represented by several galleries around the world, particularly Park West. His unique reimaging of historic images and themes had garnered him a devoted following, with permanent displays of his work at the Mississippi Museum of Art, the Wake Forest University Museum in Winston-Salem, and the Frye Museum of Art in Seattle, Washington, as well as countless pieces collected in public, private, and corporate collections throughout the world.