Painter, born in Lida, Poland, who studied at Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, 1926–32, then travelled in Dalmatia, Greece and Italy the following year, settling in Paris for five years in 1934. During World War II served with the Polish Army, which brought him to Britain in 1940. He was an Official War Artist, following the allied campaign into Belgium. Żyw had had his first one-man show at the Art Institute in Warsaw in 1936, a first British solo exhibition taking place at the Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh in 1945. It gave him a retrospective in 1957; others included Zachęta Museum, Warsaw, 1967, and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 1972 (and tour) and 1986. Żyw took a studio in Edinburgh where he often worked in isolation, broken by occasional trips to Tuscany, Italy, where he finally lived, growing olives.