Old lime tree in Piotrawin

The Lublin portfolio is one of the mature graphic works of Leon Wyczółkowski (1852-1936), who devoted over thirty years of his artistic activity to graphic art, abandoning oil painting on its behalf. He became interested in the graphic medium 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. In panoramic views, shots of historic buildings and meticulously reconstructed architectural details he combined documentary skill with an extraordinary passion for individual feeling of architecture. The Lublin portfolio is one of the most beautiful graphic portraits of the city, which the artist supplemented with three boards unrelated to urban architecture. These include two versions of Sosenki and Stara lipa in Piotrawin. Wyczółkowski prepared the sketches during his stay in Lublin in 1918. Composed of seventeen auto-lithographic sheets, the portfolio was published a year later in Krakow in twenty copies. After printing the edition planned by the artist, the lithographic stones were destroyed, which in Wyczółkowski's case was a frequent practice and gave his prints a unique character.

The penultimate, sixteenth sheet of the portfolio, like Sosenki, is an expression of Wyczółkowski's special sensitivity to and love of his native nature. “I am a child of the forest” - he used to say about himself, fascinated with the beauty of the forest landscape and the anatomy of trees, which he made one of the main motifs of his late graphic works. In the case of the sixteenth sheet, the artist's attention is focused on the linden tree in Piotrawin, planted, according to legend, by bishop Stanisław of Szczepanów as a memento of the resurrection of Piotr Strzemieńczyk. Wyczółkowski carefully analyses the squat, furrowed trunk and wide, twisted boughs. He contrasts them with the tangle of delicate twigs, which build the crown of the tree like a dense cloud of black and white lines. Barely visible from behind the boughs, the Gothic church becomes only a background, dominated by the beauty and power of nature.

Anna Hałata