The Polish Press Agency were informed about the passing away of Ciechanowiecki by Prof. Andrzej Rottermund, the director of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The collection of the Royal Castle includes over 3,000 exhibits – furniture, textiles, paintings, sculpture and jewellery, founded by the Ciechanowieccy Foundation established by Andrzej Ciechanowiecki.
Andrzej Ciechanowiecki was born in 1924 in Warsaw, into a family of landed gentry, who lost their lands near Witebsk and Połock after the Riga Treaty. As a son of a diplomat, Ciechanowiecki spent part of his childhood in Budapest. He was 15 years old when the Second World War started. In Nazi-occupied Warsaw, he passed his final exams and started his studies in the history of art at a secret university. He joined the Home Army and fought in the Warsaw Uprising.
After the war, Ciechanowiecki graduated from the History of Art faculty at the Jagellonian University and from the School of Business in Kraków. In 1950, shortly after becoming an assistant at the History of Art Institute, he was arrested because of his connection to the Home Army. After a two-year investigation, he was sentenced for the alleged aid given to “Anglo-Saxon and Vatican spies” and spent 6 years in communist prisons.
After coming out of prison, he returned to his scholarly work at the Jagiellonian University in Karków. He was interested in furniture-making and goldsmithing in Kraków during the Baroque period, and the culture of the old Republic of Poland. In 1958, he received the Ford Foundation's and British Council's scholarship and decided to remain outside Poland. He received a doctor's degree in philosophy at the University of Tubingen in Germany. After his stays in Germany, the UK, the United States and Portugal, he decided to settle in London.
In London, he started collaboration with the Mallett at Bourdon House (a branch of the renowned gallery Mallett & Son in Bond Street), where he launched five exhibitions presenting French sculpture. In 1965, he was one of the founders of the Heim Gallery and in 1986 he established, also in London, the Old Masters Gallery. The galleries led by Ciechanowiecki were particularly interested in paintings from the 16th to 19th centuries. They were also specialists in introducing Baroque and Neoclassical sculpture, especially Italian and French, to the market.
Using the money he earned, Ciechanowiecki invested in buying works by Polish artists found in the West. In 1998, he was awarded the Order of the White Eagle and in 1993 the Grand Cross of the Polonia Restituta.