In merged lands

At the beginning of the 1950s, Henryk Stażewski, a leading Polish Constructivist who maintained close contacts with the Parisian bohemia, made several works maintained in the style of figurative works of Edouard Pignon and early paintings of André Fougeron. One of them, entitled Na scalonych ziemiach [On the United Lands], was presented at the Second National Exhibition (1951/1952). The painting depicts a peasant labourer in a loose shirt and helmet, proudly sitting on an agricultural machine. Depicted in an almost American plane, like a cowboy conquering the Wild West in a popular western, instead of firearms he holds the rudder of the vehicle in his exaggerated hands. The geometry lesson was used here in the Stalinist mission of the Six-Year Plan, but it did not bring success in the artistic competition: in the eyes of the jury, Stażewski remained a formalist. Krystyna Czarnocka, a quarter of a century younger than the painter, who at the time was studying art history under the theorist of socialist realism Juliusz Starzyński, wrote condescendingly: We cannot omit here H. Stażewski's composition entitled Na scalonych ziemiach, because of its importance on the path of this artist's breakthrough, a path testifying to the great effort and sincerity of his search. [...] What strikes us here are certain drawing deformations, the tininess of the tractor itself and the tractor driver's clothes, as well as a certain poster-like approach to the whole, especially in the colour scheme. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the great merit of this work is the convincing truth and nobility of the tractor driver's face which, while clearly individualised, has the character of a symbol in the best sense of the word. The achievement in content is all the more valuable as it is clear that it is not an accident, that it is a conscious assumption, consistently carried out by means of painting, and at the same time testifying to the great abilities of this author (Tematyka pracy [Themes of Work], Przegląd Artystyczny 1952, no. 1, pp. 34-35). He preferred to forget about this and similar works, quickly returning to the extreme avant-garde problems of abstraction.

Szymon Piotr Kubiak