Autumn

The composition Autumn dates from the early, student phase of the work of the artist, who was brought up in the circle of the Krakow studios of Józef Mehoffer, Leon Wyczółkowski and later Józef Pankiewicz. It is a clear trace and testimony to the lessons learned in the Young Poland tradition of stylising floral landscapes in Art Nouveau shapes. The painting, merged with noble, warm colours and dominated by a leafless tree forked with an intricate arabesque of rhizomes and branches, tells a story of slow transformations of nature.

In the foreground, yellowing plants, twisting ferns, and dry branches of bushes are part of the vegetative process of overripening and withering. Autumn is pictured on the verge of natural excess, bloom and withering, dying. This natural cycle describes a painting spectacle depicted by swirling lines, strands, and smudges of paint that blur and soften the contours of the plant world.

Although the painting belongs to the painter's youthful attempts and experiments, it reveals his awareness and potential. The developed repertoire of forms and means blends harmoniously with the imagined theme, mood, and representation. An Art Nouveau swirling line, a mosaic of contours and colours, a composition based on strong framing modelled on Japanese graphics, makes explicit the dynamic process inherent in the cycle of nature, the transition from one state to another, the ripening of the autumn landscape as a harbinger of winter stagnation.

Marcin Lachowski