DOI Artikel:
Styrna, Natasza: Z prowincji do metropolii – przypadek Saszy Blondera
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.44918#0167
After returning from Paris in 1926, the young Blonder began to work very actively
in Chortkiv. He worked as a stage designer in the local amateur youth theatre, and
he organized art courses for those interested. He decided to return to Paris in 1929.
This time he was better prepared. He travelled with Leopold Lewicki, who also came
from Chortkiv. In Paris, they used the contacts that Blonder had established during
his earlier visit. They lived in one of the smali hotels near Notre-Dame, they visited
Paris galleries and museums, and they tried to work. The painter, very susceptible
to all kinds of inspiration throughout his life, tried various artistic languages of
expression. In his sketchbooks from the turn of the 1920S and 1930S we find typi-
cal urban scenes recorded in a vivid nervous stroke, and next to them, drawings
distinguished by a tendency to simplify and synthesize shapes, then two pages later,
a study of abstract, geometrie forms. His assays in the field of painting are very free
and expressive. In many of his works we fmd a tendency to distort shapes.
He was undoubtedly bewildered by everything he had encountered in Paris,
the resilience of artistic life, the vastness of the artistic milieu, and the multitude
of trends present within the Paris art scene. In this context, it is even morę puz-
zling why in 1931, by when he had probably been quite well integrated into the new
environment and accustomed to the local conditions, he decided to leave the city
and move to Kraków. In 1926, without wasting energy on any minor peregrina-
tions, he went straight to Paris. In 1929, when he had already graduated from high
school, he did not think about studying in Kraków. At the time, he wrote about
the Kraków academy, obviously nonplussed, doubting the value of the education
offered therein - learning the “proportions between the navel and the nipple” or
the ability to place “subtle glitz” within the painting.2 Why, then, did he decide to
study in Kraków after all? It seems that he had turned upside down the natural
course of things: an impecunious artist from deep provinces gets into the closest
major arts centre, and after a while, and only if he is very ambitious, he reaches the
Parisian mecca of art, sometimes to stay there for good. Blonder took this step at
the beginning of his artistic path. But why did he turn back?
There are many possible answers. Maybe once again, the money stood in the
way, and he decided that in Kraków it would be easier to make a living? Perhaps
it was hard for him to be parted with his family? Lewicki, who studied in Kraków,
might have had some influence on Blonder and perhaps he may have tried to get
him to come back. There is another important circumstance to consider: in 1932,
the artist s mother died. Symptoms of the disease probably appeared earlier, and
that might have been the reason for his choice to study closer to home.
It is difficult to guess. Perhaps all of the reasons mentioned above, in some part,
contributed to the artists decision. Or perhaps there were morę? In trying to answer
this question, it also makes sense to reach for Blonder s sketchbooks. Their pages are
filled with dozens of simple, modest, nostalgie works, showing the painter s native
land. The landscape is endless, the forms are raw, branches of lonely trees or silhou-
ettes of people, wrapped in scarves, are blown by the wind. Such themes keep recur-
ring in the sketchbooks constantly, and they are captured in a rather singular way.
If Blonder portrayed his friends from the Kraków Group with humour and light iro-
ny (see: Fig. 3-4), the expression of these landscapes is wholly different. The means
2 Special Collection of the Institute of Art at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, The
Sasza Blonder archive, Index No. 773-11-1 (1929), p. 20 r.
3. Sasza Blonder, Moja
awantura (portrait of
Berta Grtinberg), mixed
technique, Sasza Blonder
Archive 1929-1937, Special
Collections of the Polish
Academy of Sciences,
Warsaw.
4. Sasza Blonder, Portrait
of Leopold Lewicki, 1930,
ink on paper, Sasza Blonder
Archive 1929-1937, Special
Collections of the Polish
Academy of Sciences,
Warsaw.
-> see p.154
From provinces to the metropolis - the case of Sasza Blonder
165
in Chortkiv. He worked as a stage designer in the local amateur youth theatre, and
he organized art courses for those interested. He decided to return to Paris in 1929.
This time he was better prepared. He travelled with Leopold Lewicki, who also came
from Chortkiv. In Paris, they used the contacts that Blonder had established during
his earlier visit. They lived in one of the smali hotels near Notre-Dame, they visited
Paris galleries and museums, and they tried to work. The painter, very susceptible
to all kinds of inspiration throughout his life, tried various artistic languages of
expression. In his sketchbooks from the turn of the 1920S and 1930S we find typi-
cal urban scenes recorded in a vivid nervous stroke, and next to them, drawings
distinguished by a tendency to simplify and synthesize shapes, then two pages later,
a study of abstract, geometrie forms. His assays in the field of painting are very free
and expressive. In many of his works we fmd a tendency to distort shapes.
He was undoubtedly bewildered by everything he had encountered in Paris,
the resilience of artistic life, the vastness of the artistic milieu, and the multitude
of trends present within the Paris art scene. In this context, it is even morę puz-
zling why in 1931, by when he had probably been quite well integrated into the new
environment and accustomed to the local conditions, he decided to leave the city
and move to Kraków. In 1926, without wasting energy on any minor peregrina-
tions, he went straight to Paris. In 1929, when he had already graduated from high
school, he did not think about studying in Kraków. At the time, he wrote about
the Kraków academy, obviously nonplussed, doubting the value of the education
offered therein - learning the “proportions between the navel and the nipple” or
the ability to place “subtle glitz” within the painting.2 Why, then, did he decide to
study in Kraków after all? It seems that he had turned upside down the natural
course of things: an impecunious artist from deep provinces gets into the closest
major arts centre, and after a while, and only if he is very ambitious, he reaches the
Parisian mecca of art, sometimes to stay there for good. Blonder took this step at
the beginning of his artistic path. But why did he turn back?
There are many possible answers. Maybe once again, the money stood in the
way, and he decided that in Kraków it would be easier to make a living? Perhaps
it was hard for him to be parted with his family? Lewicki, who studied in Kraków,
might have had some influence on Blonder and perhaps he may have tried to get
him to come back. There is another important circumstance to consider: in 1932,
the artist s mother died. Symptoms of the disease probably appeared earlier, and
that might have been the reason for his choice to study closer to home.
It is difficult to guess. Perhaps all of the reasons mentioned above, in some part,
contributed to the artists decision. Or perhaps there were morę? In trying to answer
this question, it also makes sense to reach for Blonder s sketchbooks. Their pages are
filled with dozens of simple, modest, nostalgie works, showing the painter s native
land. The landscape is endless, the forms are raw, branches of lonely trees or silhou-
ettes of people, wrapped in scarves, are blown by the wind. Such themes keep recur-
ring in the sketchbooks constantly, and they are captured in a rather singular way.
If Blonder portrayed his friends from the Kraków Group with humour and light iro-
ny (see: Fig. 3-4), the expression of these landscapes is wholly different. The means
2 Special Collection of the Institute of Art at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, The
Sasza Blonder archive, Index No. 773-11-1 (1929), p. 20 r.
3. Sasza Blonder, Moja
awantura (portrait of
Berta Grtinberg), mixed
technique, Sasza Blonder
Archive 1929-1937, Special
Collections of the Polish
Academy of Sciences,
Warsaw.
4. Sasza Blonder, Portrait
of Leopold Lewicki, 1930,
ink on paper, Sasza Blonder
Archive 1929-1937, Special
Collections of the Polish
Academy of Sciences,
Warsaw.
-> see p.154
From provinces to the metropolis - the case of Sasza Blonder
165