Kiss

Jan Wydra was born into a poor family. After the death of his father, who was ill with tuberculosis, the burden of supporting his mother and sister fell on the shoulders of the then 16-year-old boy. He took up a job at the Voivodship Office in Lublin and was forced to discontinue his education. However, he had a strong desire to create. After he stopped working, he studied under Tadeusz Pruszkowski, who appreciated his talent, and after two months of study Wydra was moved to the group of masters. Already at the beginning of his education, in 1923, Pruszkowski invited his students to Kazimierz Dolny for an open air painting workshop. The motif from Kazimierz is a frequent one in the works of Wydra, on its own, but also as a part of works with a developed composition, touching upon other subjects, as in the painting entitled Motherhood or the lost Crucifixion. The variety of topics taken up by the artist proves his openness and the fact that he was not confined to a single issue.

Wydra's friend, Józef Czechowicz, whose opinion the painter respected, said: “His drawings, the first form of artistic expression which Wydra acquired, have features of lightness and accuracy combined in a strange way. This lightness does not result from the treatment of the subject, but from the certainty of eye and hand [...] in this field many could envy him his mastery”.

The theme of the representation, The Kiss, carries many associations that include The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. Eros, not so much a Greek god, but a much broader concept referring to sensual love, occupies a central place in this work. The mood of intimacy created by the twilight lamplight is disturbed by the intrusion of the viewer's gaze. The woman with expressive curves, as in Diego Velázquez's Venus with a Mirror, seems an even more mysterious figure than in the Baroque masterpiece, because we do not see her face, even from her reflection in the mirror, as in the case of Master Velázquez.

Klara Sadkowska