Stanisław Sheybal (1891-1976), krzemieniecki nauczyciel, działacz kulturalny, malarz i fotograf
Stanisław Sheybal (1891-1976), a teacher based in Kremenets, a Cultural Activist, Photographer and Painter

Summary/Abstract: This is a short account of Stanisław Sheybal’s artistic, cultural and social activities, which reached their heyday in the years 1927-1942, which the artist spent in Kremenets in Volhynia (now the Ukraine). Stanisław Sheybal was an important figure in the local artistic life, and he was the initiator and organizer of many undertakings. As a teacher at the famous Kremenets High School (Liceum Krzemienieckie), he established a photography laboratory there in 1928, and in 1930 he became one of the founders of the Krzemienieckie Towarzystwo Fotograficzne (Kremenets Photographic Society). Apart from this, he participated in establishing Music and Drawing Holiday Centres, where classes were conducted by artists rather than teachers; these included: Bronisław Rutkowski, Tadeusz Ochlewski, Olgierd Straszyński, Jan Cybis, Władysław Lam, Emil Krcha, Stanisław Szczepański, Eustachy Wasilkowski czy Jerzy Wolff. Stanisław Sheybal himself gave talks and conducted workshops there. Moreover, he organized a student choir and symphonic orchestra in Kremenets, as well as creating from scratch and conducting an amateur symphonic orchestra of the Union of Social Organizations (Zjednoczenie Organizacji Społecznych – ZOS). He was also the editor of the magazine Życie Krzemienieckie (Life in Kremenets); 1932-1937) as well as being a town councillor, in which capacity he made efforts for Kremenets to be included on the list of architectural monuments. Stanisław Sheybal learned photography from his uncle Józef Sebald (the owner of a well-known photographic studio), with whom he lived and worked when he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (1912-1914), but he only began to pursue this artistic discipline seriously when in Kremenets. Apart from the ordinary silver-bromide technique, he worked with pigment, bromoil, brometching and gum bichromate, the latter being his main technique. Around 1936, the Royal Photographic Society in London ranked him as one of the ten leading gum artists working with the use of gum bichromate. In the same year, the exclusive Polish Photo-Club invited him to become a member. Stanisław Sheybal spent the first years of the second world war in Kremenets. Towards the end of June 1941, together with the photographer Henryk Hermanowicz (1912-1992), he founded the “Sztuka” photographic studio. Later he left for Warsaw. After the war he did not return to photography and the majority of his works remained in Kremenets and were partly lost.

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