Józef Gosławski

Józef Jan Gosławski was born 24 April 1908 and trained as a sculptor in an interwar Poland hungry for symbols of its reborn state. He worked across scales: coins that passed through millions of hands, monuments planted in the landscape, medals struck to mark history. The fisherman five-zloty piece became one of his most circulated designs; the Chopin monument at Żelazowa Wola rooted the composer in his birthplace. His Year 1939 medal captured the weight of that threshold year. He won competitions, earned the Silver Cross of Merit, and spent three decades shaping how a country saw itself in bronze and stone before his death on 23 January 1963.