At dusk

Art history remembers Kazimierz Podsadecki, a graduate of the Faculty of Decorative Arts at the Industrial School in Kraków (1923), primarily as an avant-garde artist. Collages, photomontages and modern graphic covers of publications were created until the end of the 1930s, but from the middle of this decade, colour and the traditional genres of landscape, genre scenes and still life began to play a prominent role in his paintings. It was certainly influenced by the environment of the Paris Committee, which brought to the Second Polish Republic, and especially to Kraków, another wave of interests culminating in the post-impressionism of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Although the world depicted by Podsadecki was surrealistically deformed and retained a fine line pattern, the painting gained a multi-layered structure of impasto paint and specific characters. In 1939, the artist participated in the September Campaign and was taken prisoner of war. After the end of the Second World War, he decided to leave Kraków for the Regained Territories, where there were calls for the cultural Polonisation of the newly incorporated German cities. In December 1945, he settled in Szczecin, immediately taking part in the first local art exhibition (1945/1946). The needs of propaganda in interior design and decoration of special events contributed to the creation of historical and allegorical wall paintings. Podsadecki again dealt with typography and illustration, designed toys and printed fabrics, founded the Cooperative of Visual Artists and taught at the State Visual Culture Centre and the State Secondary School of Visual Arts. In 1952, he returned to Kraków, where, in addition to colour painting (O zmroku [At Dusk], 1953) and drawing reinterpretations of the works of old masters, from the mid-fifties he created polychrome plaster engravings as a synthesis of styles used from the beginning of his career.

Szymon Piotr Kubiak