Szymon Syrkus

He studied architecture in Vienna, Graz, Riga, Moscow, Warsaw, as well as sculpture and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. In 1926 he founded a group of creative Praesens (along with Barbara and Stanislaw Brukalskim, Bohdan Lachert, Joseph and Helen Szanajca Niemirska), which in 1928 became the Polish section Congrés Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM). During World War II he was in the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the war he participated in the work on the reconstruction of Warsaw urban concept.