Twórczość Zygmunta Radnickiego po 1945 roku

Abstract

ZYGMUNT RADNICKI’S ART AFTER 1945

Zygmunt Radnicki (1894–1969) was an artist associated with the art milieux of Lvov and Kraków. His works from the period 1920–1925 reveal his fascination with cubism, expressionism and futurism, these infl uences, however, had been fi ltered through the artistic activity of the formists. Apparently, the art of Jan Hrynkowski and Leon Dołżycki was particularly important for Radnicki. Following the breakdown of the formists’ group, he and a number of his fellow artists established the “Jednoróg” (lit.: “unicorn”) Artists Guild. Members of that group were interested in genuine artistic crafts, lack of literary inspiration in visual arts, and, most of all, in the predominance of colour as such. In 1925 Radnicki went on a scholarship to Paris for a year to attend Józef Pankowicz’s school of kapist painting. After 1926 his art underwent a signifi cant change. He gave up using contours which formerly separated the various elements of his compositions, and started to introduce rich colour which integrated all the objects depicted in his paintings. He tried to make his palette lighter and clearer, to expand and enrich his range of colours. In his notes he often emphasised how important the art of Paul Cézanne was for him as a painter. There are three groups of paintings in which this inspiration drawn from the French master became most visible: landscapes, still lifes and portraits. Apart from certain formal and compositional parallels, we can also notice a similar choice of colours here, although Radnicki’s colours seem richer and more intense than Cézanne’s. The two artists often used similar objects (fruit, fabrics, baskets, a kitchen table with the characteristic drawer) as elements of their paintings. Apart from his artistic activity, from 1921 onwards Radnicki also worked as a teacher in Lvov. After World War II he permanently moved to Kraków where he taught at the Fine Art Academy. In 1946 he earned the title of associate professor, and in 1951 he was promoted to full professorship; he also held the position of the Academy’s provisional Rector from 1950 to 1951. After the war Radnicki belonged to the generation of mature artists and drew inspiration for his paintings mostly from Cézanne, the formists and the colourists. In his case, similar to many other painters, the horrors of the war were not reflected in his artistic activity. His postwar works, up until 1949, present a continuation of his artistic experiences from the interwar period, both in terms of the subjects he used and the forms of artistic expression he employed. An important chapter in the postwar history of Polish art was the public debate concerning its future. Radnicki too had his say on the subject: in 1946 he made his views public in an article he published in Przegląd Artystyczny (major Polish art magazine at that time). In the socialist realism period (1949–1954) he tried to conform to the style that became almost obligatory in Poland at that time. The artistic breakthrough initiated by the exhibition titled „Arsenał 55” whose general tone harbingered the end of socialist realism in Poland influenced Radnicki’s art and encouraged him to resume his formal experiments which involved simplifi cation of figural forms and synthesis verging on the abstract. After the breakthrough of 1955, Tadeusz Kantor introduced Art Informel in Poland, Radnicki, however, did not embrace the new vogue. The emotionality, spontaneity and lack of control in the process of artistic creation made this kind of painting alien to him, as it did not belong to the forms of expression that he felt were natural for his art. Throughout the rest of his artistic career his style remained close to geometric abstraction, his major influences being Cézanne and the formists. The only variation he introduced in some of his later paintings was a freer use of colour.