Michel Sima

Michel Smajewski, known as Michel Sima, was born on May 20, 1912, in Slonim, Poland. He came from a bourgeois family. From childhood, he devoted himself to drawing and tried his hand at small sculptures. He studied drawing at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. After becoming a student of Zadkine, he was noticed by Cocteau, who introduced him to Picabia and Paul Éluard. From that point on, while working with press agencies, he produced photographic reports on Paris and artistic events of the 1930s, all the while continuing his career as a sculptor. In 1946, having survived Auschwitz, he reconnected with Picasso and photographed him daily in his studio in Antibes, resulting in a unique photographic documentation of the artist and his work. This became the starting point for a remarkable series of portraits of artists associated with the School of Paris.