Adam Styka was a French-Polish painter. Born on April 7, 1890 to the prominent French painter Jan Styka, he went on to become a disciple of the Orientalist movement, painting depictions of the American West, exoticized foreign motifs, and religious themes. After a stint in the French military, Styka was awarded the National Order of Merit in tandem with French citizenship. Utilizing his newfound country's allegiance, he traveled to North Africa, absorbing the Islamic culture and imagery to distill into his later paintings, creating realistically rendered works featuring harem women, warriors, and desert landscapes. In 1944, Styka was commissioned to create images of Egyptian pyramids for a church in Warsaw. Originally intending to create a thorough painting over many months, Styka's arrest at the hands of German soldiers hastened progress on the work, where it was promptly completed and hung in the chapel until it was destroyed in a church fire in 2007. Styka died on September 23, 1959 and is buried in Doylestown, PA.
