Crows

Franciszek Rerutkiewicz (1886-1920) consistently developed painting themes which enabled him to show the proficiency of his technique – he painted still lives and diversified landscapes which allowed him to search for colouristic harmonies. His short artistic career took place at the beginning of the 20th century, in tandem with his education in the atelier of Józef Pankiewicz. It was through him that Rerutkiewicz simplified modelling and looked for colour combinations, often in cool colours. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts he went to Paris, where he stayed until 1918. Following the example of his teacher, he followed the path of the patrons of modern art – impressionists, especially inspired by the work of Paul Cézanne, which led him to seek plastic shortcuts and colourful expression.

Fragment ogrodu [Fragment of the garden] was created after his return to Poland. The artist settled in Zakopane and painted small, narrowly framed mountain views, developing an independent style, drawing on the lessons of Cubism and European Expressionism. His impression of nature, shaped by simplified modelling and violent strokes of colour, was characterised by dynamism and dark, subdued colours evoking the impression of majesty and terror of the observed phenomena. In comparison with mountain landscapes, the view of the garden acquires a muted, much more intimate form. The dynamism of the paint strokes has been replaced by a tight arrangement of the park landscape depicted in autumn. The yellowed leaves of the trees and flowering vegetation create a decorative arrangement of forms carefully framed by dark lines of branches and boughs. A diagonally running road brings to mind a tight photographic frame exposing a flock of crows in the foreground. The artist's late painting is evidence of a different search for and free choice of artistic conventions. The independent style of the painter of mountain views was replaced by an ornamentally treated landscape, reminiscent of the linear style of Modernism at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, which marked the beginning of the artist's education in Pankiewicz's studio in Krakow.