Harvesting ears

The inter-war work of Kazimierz Podsadecki, a graduate of the Faculty of Decorative Arts at the Industrial School in Kraków (1923), is commonly associated with achievements in avant-garde experimentation with new media. His abstract paintings, presented as a guest at the first exhibition of the Praesens group at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw (1926), are widely recognised. Mention is made of his links with the international theatrical avant-garde, made possible through his collaboration with the Kraków-based magazine Zwrotnica. However, experts all over the world mention above all Podsadecki's pioneering role in the field of typography, photomontage and artistic film. Collages and modern graphic settings of publications were created until the end of the 1930s, but from the middle of the decade the avant-garde lost its importance. The change in attitude was most evident in Podsadecki's painting, where the leading role was now played by colour and the traditional genres of landscape, genre scenes and still life. Although the figures were subjected to surrealistic deformation, they retained the finesse of line, but gained a stronger link with reality. Representative of this period is the painting Zbieranie kłosów [Gathering Ears] (1934) from the Szczecin collection. The abstract background, composed of organically curved, irregular patches of ultramarine, black and yellow, gained a clearly defined mimetic function thanks to the addition of the figure of a bent peasant woman in the foreground. Deciphering the meaning of the representation as a rural landscape allows us to notice its subsequent elements in the group complementing the female figure on the left side of the composition: these are the red slope of the roof, the white walls of the buildings and the green crown of the tree. Podsadecki's turn towards the problems of everyday life also took the form of activity for the benefit of the environment - he became a member of the Association of Polish Artists in Krakow, fighting for the improvement of the social status of artists through public commissions and the promotion of their work in wider circles of society.

Szymon Piotr Kubiak