Tower in Kazimierz

Leon Wyczółkowski (1852-1936) devoted over thirty years of his artistic activity to graphic art, abandoning oil painting on its behalf. Around 1900, already as a mature artist, he began to analyse the technical possibilities of etching, aquatint, algraphy, fluorophores and, above all, lithography. Thanks to the similar effects of a lithographic print and drawing and painting, and the possibility of experimentation, which best suited Wyczółkowski's preferences and temperament, lithography became his favourite technique. He published cycles of graphic works in low-circulation folders devoted to the landscape and architecture of Polish cities.

The board made in lithographic technique, depicting a tower in Kazimierz is an expression of Wyczółkowski's fascination with the beauty of the plein-airs in Kazimierz, which for years attracted numerous artists looking for picturesque painting motifs. The artist valued them particularly highly, as expressed by his frequent visits to Kazimierz in the years 1918-1922. The artist was inspired by, among others, the market square with the Renaissance tenement houses of the Przybyłów family, the Celejowska tenement house portrayed in watercolour technique and transposed onto lithographic prints, the parish church, the granary and the Vistula landscapes.

The asymmetrically composed board with a fragmentary shot of the tower, surprisingly framed below the finial, reveals the influence of Japanese woodcuts. The artist's characteristic aspiration to monumentalize the depicted elements and to characterize them by means of a selected fragment, since according to the artist's words, “the whole would reduce the magnitude”, has been most fully expressed here. The seemingly random composition has been carefully thought over by the author - the massive vertical part of the tower is balanced by horizontally closed lines of bushes, the bank of the river, the ribbon of the Vistula and a wide stretch of the sky. Wyczółkowski departs from details in favour of an impressionistic sketch, and the graphic drawing, with which he emphasizes the structure of the stone wall, gives way to a varied painterly spot.

Anna Hałata