Sower

Between 1907 and 1910, Bronisław Bartel attended the studio of Teodor Axentowicz, Stanisław Dębicki, Julian Fałat and Ferdynand Ruszczyc at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Even then, he was mainly interested in decorative painting and kiliming, and portrait and marine painting. He then settled in Warsaw, where between 1916 and 1918 he worked at the Museum of Fine Arts, creating documentation of objects and prints. In 1919, he became the artistic manager of the Publishing Department of St. Adalbert's Printing House and Bookshop in Poznań, and between 1921 and 1927 he co-founded the Świt Group of Artists from Wielkopolska. Initially, he taught at the State School of Art Industry in Bydgoszcz (1922-1926), and after its liquidation, he returned permanently to Poznań as a lecturer of the State School of Decorative Arts and Art Industry. Bartel's work was then dominated by expressionist-folk stylisation and allegorical themes, evident in the Szczecin painting Siewcy [The Sower] with divine rays, a dove and the biblical effect of work in the form of a blossoming flower. Two years later, the more elaborate multi-figural scene Żeńcy [The Harvesters] was created, and sacred themes continued to appear in the following decade, when Bartel organised Wystawa sztuki religijnej [The Exhibition of Religious Art] (1934) with the group Plastyka. From the time of his trip to Paris in 1929, there was a permanent retreat in his painting from post-Cubist tendencies in favour of colouristic solutions. Displaced from Poznań during the Nazi occupation, he settled in Warsaw, where he served as vice president of the Artists' Cooperative. Returning to Poznań after World War II, he worked briefly at the State Institute of Fine Arts and until his retirement in 1951 managed the local State Secondary School of Fine Arts.

Szymon Piotr Kubiak