Mieczysław Jan Ireneusz Lubelski (30 December 1886 – 29 April 1965) was a Polish monumental sculptor and ceramicist. In Poland he was part of the Poznań-based art movement, Świt, (Dawn). He was the author of many public sculptures and monuments, as well as of Religious art in several Polish cities, many of which did not survive the war. A Holocaust survivor, he was hidden by Catholic clergy in Kielce, took part in the Warsaw Uprising and after captivity in a German POW camp, resumed the final years of his career in the United Kingdom. After World War II he became especially known for the Polish Air Force Memorial in Northolt,^[1] and for reinstating some of his shattered work in Communist Poland. He also took on interior ceramic designs for exiled Poles in London.^[2][3]

Lubelski was the grandson of Filip Lubelski, a medical doctor and decorated officer in the Napoleonic Wars. He was born into the middle class assimilated family of Wilhelm, also a noted medical practitioner in Warsaw and Walentyna, who had converted to Protestantism, one of four children. His sister, Alina was an opera singer. His brother, Alfred, qualified as a medical doctor, but made a successful career as a cabaret artist. His youngest brother perished in Siberia during World War I. In 1906–07 Lubelski entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where he was a pupil of Xawery Dunikowski, and later studied in Berlin.^[2]

He was very active in the inter-war years, successfully entering competitions and winning important public commissions. He exhibited frequently, including at Warsaw's Zachęta Gallery in 1920.

Between 1921 and 1927 he was a member of the Świt art circle centred on the art school in the city of Poznań. Original members of the group included artists such as Fryderyk Pautsch, Adam Ballenstedt, Bronisław Bartel, Wiktor Gosieniecki, Stanisław Jagmin, Lubelski, Władysław Roguski, Stefan Sonnewend and Jan Jerzy Wroniecki. The movement, made up of incomers to Poznań, was an attempt to stimulate Poznań's newly burgeoning Polish artistic life and art market.^[4][5] In January 1926 Lubelski won the competition to design a public monument of historical Polish and US hero, Tadeusz Kościuszko for the city of Łódź.^[6] He moved to that city for much of the duration of the project which took four years and was finally unveiled in December 1930.^[7] His well-loved Kosciuszko Monument in Liberty Square, central Łódź (1930), which the Germans destroyed in 1939, was able to be re-created by the artist in 1960.^[8]

At the 1927 Polish Sculpture (Rzeźba Polska) exhibition, he presented two works Hygieia handing down her knowledge in reconstituted stone, and a bust of Major General Thaddeus Unrug.^[2] On that occasion he was a member of the competition jury.

Lubelski is the subject of a sketch by the eminent literary editor, Stefania Kossowska.^[23] He also appears as a minor character in the novel A Curable Romantic (2010) by Joseph Skibell, which won the 2011 Sami Rohr Prize in Jewish Literature and was nominated for the 2012 Townsend Prize for Fiction.^[24]

During his post-graduate studies in Berlin, he met his future German wife, Hildegarde Frank. They had two children. The marriage did not last and Hilde returned to her native city of Bonn in the late 1920s. Their daughter, Urszula, became the mother of a British-born actor and dancer, Christine Paul-Podlasky [fr]. His son was Jan Stanisław Lubelski.^[13]

Lubelski died in London and is buried in Brookwood Cemetery, Brookwood, Surrey, England.

• Sappers' Memorial, Warsaw
• Head of Themis on the tympanum of the Raczyński Palace, Warsaw
• Kosciuszko Monument in Liberty Square, Łódź
• Detail, Kościuszko monument, Washington relief, Łódź
• Tomb of Capt. C. Pobóg-Pruśnikowski, Fort Winiary Cemetery, Poznań
• Grave of Ludwik Zamenhof in the Jewish Cemetery, Warsaw
• Monument of Poznań Uhlans
• Polish War Memorial, Northolt
• Grave of Dr. Antoni Kutek, Brompton Cemetery, London