Hel

Antoni Chrzanowski studied under Leon Wyczółkowski and Alfred Terlikowski at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Thanks to the former, he learnt the secrets of his favourite watercolour technique, while the example given by the latter resulted in Chrzanowski's focus on the genre of still life. The artist's extensive oeuvre is dominated by paintings of bouquets of flowers in decorative vases. The second pole of his creative interests was landscape, especially views of small towns in the south of Poland and vedutas of its historical capital. Among the motifs most frequently repeated by Chrzanowski there were images of Wawel, maintained in pure, saturated colours, including the interior of the royal cathedral, which made the artist, next to Stanisław Tondos, a popular documentalist of Kraków changing over the century. An unusual painting, kept in the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin, is all the more noteworthy as a testimony to Chrzanowski's non-artistic passions. The small-sized painting depicts a scene of pulling nets out of the sea. In the rays of the setting sun, tinting the sky with lilac and golden hues and casting a cinnabar-purple glow on the foreground, a flat silhouette of a male half-act is drawn. The dynamic pose of the hero with emphasised musculature proves the anatomical interests of the author, who actively and successfully practised athletics and football. Chrzanowski's works can be found in several public collections, including the National Museum in Kraków and the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław. The result of the artist's trips to Rome, Florence, Venice and Naples in the 1960s is a series of panneaux with views of Italian cities for the Renaissance castle in Baranów Sandomierski.

Szymon Piotr Kubiak