Fangor's interest in art wasn't hindered by the outbreak of  World War II. He studied privately with Tadeusz Pruszkowski and Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski (1940–1944) and in 1946 he received a diploma in absentia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw where he was assistant professor between 1953 and 1961. In the absurdity of post-war Poland, Fangor took the expressionist and impressionist styles of the French masters early on in his career. When in 1949 the authorities instated realism as the only legitimate form of art, Fangor began painting his signature 'characters' of contemporary Polish society. His transition from impressionism and abstraction into realism was relatively smooth, his work rather different from the typical image of Socio-realism of the time.