Wyspiański, Stanisław, b 15 January 1869 in Cracow, d 28 November 1907 in Cracow. Polish modernist poet, dramatist, painter, and designer. From 1902 he taught at the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts. A friend of the Ukrainian writers Vasyl Stefanyk and Bohdan Lepky, he introduced Ukrainian themes in his plays Legion (Legion, 1900) and Bolesław Śmiały (Bolesław the Bold, 1903) and set his play Sędziówie (The Judges, 1907) in the Hutsul region. In 1887 he traveled in Galicia and sketched its architectural monuments and landscapes. He knew the collection of Ukrainian art at the Cracow National Museum well. His play Wesele (Wedding) influenced Vasyl Pachovsky to write Son ukraïns’koï nochi (A Dream of a Ukrainian Night), and his paintings influenced the Ukrainian artists Oleksa Novakivsky, Mykola Holubets, Ivan Severyn, and Mykhailo Zhuk.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hordyns’kyi, Iaroslav. ‘Stanyslav Vyspians’kyi i Ukraïna,’ ZNTSh, 155 (1937)

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]