Composition

Tymon Niesiołowski's work is associated with his participation in the Formist movement (1917-1922), still echoing in his paintings from the period of cooperation with the Association of Polish Artists Rytm, the Avant-garde, the New Generation or the Vilnius Society of Artists. Educated at the Industrial School in Lviv (1898-1900) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow (1900-1904), he initially succumbed to the influence of the Young Poland milieu, led by his former lecturers Józef Mehofffer and Stanisław Wyspiański. A tendency to use decorative line in painting, drawing and graphic compositions accompanied the artist until the end of his life. A permanent stay in Zakopane in the years 1905-1926 contributed to the establishment of contacts with a pleiad of artists fascinated with the highland culture and the Podhale region, including Jan Kasprowicz, Tadeusz Miciński, Kazimierz Przerwą-Tetmajer, Karol Szymanowski, Stefan Żeromski, and especially Stanisław Witkiewicz - the author of the Zakopane style - and his son Witkacy. In 1909, Niesiołowski joined the Podhale Arts Society [Towarzystwo Sztuka Podhalańska], and a year later he started to provide textile designs for the Kilim Society in Zakopane. Władysław Ślewiński, who stayed in nearby Poronin between 1906 and 1910, introduced Niesiołowski to the activities of the Pont-Aven artistic colony and to the cloisonistic method of Paul Gauguin, developed there. The master from Brittany, having discovered the relics of Celtic civilisation and indigenous Polynesian art, likened the black outline and the fields of pure colour filling it to the effect of archaic goldsmith techniques (fr. émail cloisonné). Common in Europe derivation of modern means of expression from the roots of their own or very distant cultures inspired also several young painters and sculptors, who together with Niesiołowski and Witkacy in 1917 formed a group Ekspresjonistów Polscy (from 1919 Formists). A watercolour from the Szczecin collection, depicting a Zakopane cottage outlined with a few concise lines, foreshadows the avant-garde works.

Szymon Piotr Kubiak