Modus: Prace z historii sztuki (18.2018)

with Koterba, who did not sell any paintings during the exhibition, and therefore he
decided, without the artist s consent, to keep two works for himself, as he claimed,
in order to cover the costs of the exhibition. The painter was particularly hurt by
the inability to recover his favourite painting titled The Platform. Unfortunately,
he had no money to buy a ticket to travel from Zakopane to Warsaw, in order to
deal with this matter in person.
In 1937, the atmosphere around him thickens even morę. In February, he was
struck off the list of members of the Association of Polish Artists, as were most of
the members of the Kraków Group. The official reason was the delayed payment
of subscriptions, but the unofficial one lied in the leftist beliefs of artists and their
activities. In such times, and in such circumstances, the artists mind has been madę
up: after six years spent in his home country, he had enough. He had graduated, he
was 28 years old, and he had nothing to live on. Instead of painting, he had to take
odd jobs and endure snubs coming from various directions. He probably did not
see himself fit in any morę in the country he returned to in 1931. After about two
years, which he spent in Paris at the turn of the 1920S and 1930S, for the next six he
tried to put down roots in any place in Poland, where he would be able to make
the living. Unfortunately, he failed.
It is worth paying attention to this sequence of events: a young artist, talented and
hard working, well acquainted with what is happening in Paris, decides to return to
Poland. It is here that he receives the essential part of his artistic education. Clearly,
he feels very much connected to his homeland. Never mind that he belongs to the
group so eagerly accused - especially then - of cosmopolitanism and a reduced
sense of what a homeland is. Clearly, this does not apply to Sasza Blonder. He gave
up Paris for Kraków, and he became intensely involved in everything that was hap-
pening in Krakóws artistic milieu in the First half of the 1930S. His drawings show
this rather well - that he felt most comfortable among people who were similar to
him, his colleagues from the group, coming from equally provincial environments,
just like himself, absorbed in similar issues of artistic and social naturę. His wife,
Berta Griinberg, also came from the same circles.
And yet he was defeated. If he returned to the country in 1931, longing for his
hometown and family environment, the next six years that he spent in its landscape
gave him another longing - for all that which he remembered from Paris. These
memories must have become a kind of antidote to the difficulties and failures he
experienced in his home country. Paris, seen from an increasingly distant per-
spective, in time, over the years, must have appeared to him as a kind of salvation
from what was becoming morę and morę tormenting and aggravating in the sur-
rounding reality. He left in the autumn of 1937, together with Berta Griinberg and
Erna Rosenstein, who was a friend of theirs. Upon arrival, he enrolled in the Paris
Department of the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts.10 Soon, Maria Jarema joined the
circle of friends. They spent a lot of time in Paris galleries and museums, and they
discussed art in the evenings. Their living conditions still left much to be desired -
he and Blima stayed in a room, which was “cold as ice”.11 After some time, Erna
10 He attended classes in the academic year 1937/38. A. Mayer, Filia paryska Akademii Sztuk
Pięknych w Krakowie w świetle materiałów archiwalnych, edited by K. Świerzowski, Kraków 2003,
P- 307.
11 E. Rosenstein, Akademia Sztuk Pięknych, in: Cyganeria i polityka, p. 412.

From provinces to the metropolis - the case of Sasza Blonder

169