Landscape with boats

Władysław Strzemiński was a painter and designer of applied art and an educator and art theoretician. All his works are the result of reflections on the understanding of art. It is the centre of all his activities. His scientific thoughts were influenced by many humanistic disciplines such as philosophy, physics, psychology, etc. The shape of his paintings was determined by the inspiration of art, both old and what was brought by modernity, especially Constructivism, Cubism, Purism and Neoplasticism. In the sketch Widzenie impresjonistów [Seeing of Impressionists], Strzemiński argues that the Impressionists' assumptions were based on a fundamental mental error. For they assumed that gaze is motionless, and it is not so - he proves as a theoretician - that a person stands in front of nature and looks at it with a motionless gaze at a single fixed point on the horizon. In his works from the Szczecin collections Pejzaż z łódkami [Landscape with Boats] (ca. 1950) and Pejzaż morski [Seascape] (ca. 1950), in exchange for maintaining the artificial unity of shape which results from the error of a fixed gaze, we gain an attempt to show the process of seeing from the perspective of a moving, spatio-temporal gaze. These are thus the same two landscapes with boats, which prove the mobility of the gaze. What is more, Strzemiński points out that, among others, in Monet's works, one has to do with the gaze gliding across the surface in quick leaps, forced to look at the changing colours of the dots. As a result, the viewer's gaze does not wander around the space of the painting but follows the path marked out for it by the painter. In his works, instead of small dots, Strzemiński uses longer lines and applies them in different rhythms. In this way, he tries to go further than the Impressionists to the essence of perception.

Beata Małgorzata Wolska