On a Cat

The trifle O Kocie [About a Cat] belongs to a collection of sixteen trifles by Józef Czechowicz presenting members of the Lublin Society of Book Lovers, an impressive cultural confraternity established in 1926 under the inspiration of Father Ludwik Zalewski.

The main character is Wiktor Hermogenes Ziółkowski (1893-1978), a painter, graphic artist, bibliophile, collector, amateur photographer, expert and collector of folk art, director of the Lublin Museum in 1944-1948. He completed secondary school in Lublin and then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow in J. Mehoffer's and S. Dębicki's studios. He was a teacher of drawing in Lublin schools, he also participated in the work of the Association of Visual Artists, Lublin Society of Book Lovers and the Society of Friends of Science in Lublin. He published several volumes of caricatures, wrote about various issues of art in, among others, "Ziemia Lubelska", "Grafika", "Rzeczy Piękne", "Silva Rerum". He published the brochures Wycinanki Dobrzyńskiego [Dobrzyński’s Cut-Outs] (1926) and Muzeum Lubelskie [The Lublin Museum] (1933). He was a collector of all kinds of Lubliniana: books, magazines, catalogues, works of professional and folk art, letters, information about people of art connected with Lublin.

The original and unusual personality of Ziółkowski, called by some the Lublin Don Quixote, a searcher of artistic treasures, attracted widespread attention. "For seventy years, " writes Mirosław Derecki, "this strange gentle man, with the look of a philosopher and the hands of a virtuoso pianist, was one of the most characteristic figures of Lublin's artistic environment and one of its most enigmatic characters".

Wiktor Ziółkowski often published under the pseudonym Julian Kot, which perfectly reflects his nature: a perverse, implacable individual, always following his own paths. That is what Józef Czechowicz refers to in his short story. The text by the author of Kamień [The Stone] corresponds very well with Ziółkowski's ex-libris made in woodcut by Kazimierz Wiszniewski, in which - as Maria Gawarecka wrote "a magnificent cat climbs on a spread book and looks into the distance with authority with new 'concepts' in mind".