Winter landscape

In the 1930s, Trachter often visited Kazimierz and Zakopane, two remote artist colonies. In them he found the spirit of nostalgic places distant from civilisation, offering a chance for simple and direct contact with the landscape. In his work, he commemorated the different seasons of the year by applying different painterly filters and interpretations to city views.

Pejzaż zimowy [Winter Landscape] shows picturesquely set wooden buildings blended into the background defined by the soft outlines of the Tatra landscape. The muted landscape, devoid of human presence, evokes a harmonious fusion of the houses with the surrounding landscape. The extensive snow cover becomes at the same time a pretext for differentiating the colour scale, broken with blues and yellows.

Trachter's winter Tatra landscape becomes a symbolic record of the longing of 20th century artists, who look for a specific life attitude and philosophy in small towns. The empty landscape takes on a personalised character, recreating the gentle coexistence of nature and culture, framed by a harmonious composition of piled-up plans: a snowy road, wooden houses, a soft horizon line marked by the ridges of hills and a luminous sheet of blue sky. The mythology of a small town filled with peace and quiet reveals the original sense of a serene existence, paradoxically contributing to the positioning of picturesque towns as attractive destinations for mass tourism.

Marcin Lachowski