DOI Artikel:
Kossowski, Łukasz; Weiss, Wojciech [Ill.]: O inspiracjach sztuką i naturą w dojrzałej twórczości Wojciecha Weissa 1901 - 1939
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14247#0235
O INSPIRACJACH SZTUKĄ I NATURĄ W DOJRZALEJ TWÓRCZOŚCI WOJCIECHA WEISSA 1901-1939
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point in the work of Weiss. The landscapes in pastel made in Italy are bright and at the same time dim, like a wall-painting. In
the diffuse light there keep still the outlines of cypresses, ancient columns, ruins. The gloomy, orgiastic processions known from
the earlier compositions by Weiss change into joyful, Dionysical cortèges with little Bacchus carried over the heads of the crowd.
The portraits too are slowly loosing their expressionist, concentrated tone, for instance the nostalgie and defined by a délicate
sfumato „Portrait of Perzyński" (1901). By 1905, probably under the influence of Leon Wyczółkowski, Weiss créâtes a séries of
portraits of country women, colouristically dominated by tones of duli red, ginger, and blue. Their colouring becomes more
décorative and its natural carrier is the elear line of the contour. The extatic rythmes calm down to pass into milder and more
harmonious structures. The color becomes duli, and at the same time cleaner. Gray and limy white becomes slowly predominating.
In the oeuvre of Weiss „the white period" begins and will last from 1905 to 1912. It is connected inseparably with Kalwaria, by
Cracow, where the artist's father has bought a smali house situated in a big orchard. It's there that the artist will soon settle down
with his young wife Irène, it's also there that he'll create a family paradise, it's there that he'll paint the romantic portraits of his
parents in the light of a petrol lamp and the pictures of his wife caught stright away, during her domestic occupations: sewing,
toilette or sleep, quite often framed in a Japanese way. Japan in Kalwaria? Weiss got in touch with Japanese art at the instance
of its greatest Polish collector and master Feliks Manggha Jasieński, whose portrait he painted in 1903. It is also from him that
a considérable collection of Japanese woodeuts reached the artist's studio. The fascination with the art of Japan seems to be a key
to understanding the art of the „white period". The landscapes painted in Kalwaria are created first of all in the nearest surroun-
ding of the house, in the old orchard; they are practically a visualization of oceurences in Spring and Winter, the seasons preferred
by the artist, when the natural colouring is dominated by gray and white. In this case the inspirations with the colouring of the
Japanese woodeut are readable, for instance the landscapes by I.Hiroshige lost in the silent snow whiteness, or elear, unfilled
spaces of compositions remaining the active role of empty space used in the Japanese art. In the „white period" the most fasci-
nating subject for Weiss is the commonplaceness of Kalwaria organically connected with the rythms of the living nature. The
nearest, the most banal becomes the most interesting: a hen scratching among the been pods, a cat basking in the sun, a branch
of an apple-tree breaking out into blossom. A fragmentary way thèse motives have been treated in, their compositional retrench-
ment, situating them quite often on the diagonal of a picture - thèse are again the means of expression borrowed from the Japanese
art. Thèse compositions are like short haiku written in praise of the nature. Weiss becomes its génial stenographer. This steno-
graphy is at the same time the most personal art, never exposed in the artist's life-time, and not hiding anything. In the Weiss'
pictures of the „white period" the intimate space of the house interior is opened on the space of the nature, the space of the
adjacent garden. And once more in the views from the window composed in a Japanese way, fragments of the garden from beyond
the frame of the picture are reflected in the panes of the open Windows. On the window-sill there are fruits, a cat is basking.
A grape-vine branch is looking inside. The border between the inside and the outside is called in question. There remains a joyful
expérience of a homogenous, luminous phenomenon of the nature.
In 1913 Weiss is made a professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. In 1914 he is awarded the Bavarian Order of
St.Michael and the Order of the Austrian Iron Crown. From 1915 on he is occupied in sculpturing, creating over ten féminine nudes
and busts. He paints mainly landscapes of Kalwaria and studio-nudes. In 1915-1916 the artist reaches climax in presenting the many
times painted insolated orchard of Kalwaria. His wife Irena is hanging out rugs or picking fruit. The family gathers by tea under an
old walnut tree. The parents are sitting in the shadow of an enormous pear tree. In the art of Weiss of this period the classical motives
appear. All the time in his artistic work Weiss leads a dialog with the antiquity and with the art of old masters. The dialog begins
with drawings of the académie plaster figures and the compétitive composition „Odysseus in the depths of the Hades" (1894) (Weiss
breaks here with the traditional, Winckelmann's vision of the antiquity) and is continued in pictures illustrating motives and plots
taken from the mythology: „A faun dancing with a girl" (1897), „A Procession with Bacchus" (1901), „Bachanalia" (1903),
„Perseus" (1904), dances similar to painted by Matisse, showed in the water-colours of 1910-1912, the picture „The rape of
nymphs" of 1911. Even in the intimacy of the „white period" we сап find a picture where Irène having a rest is accompanied by
Cupid - a boy with a child's bow (1909). In the séquence of thèse ,,antique" motives the especially important picture is one
entitled „Fruits", of 1913, awarded with the Probes Barczewski prize. It présents a monumentalized nude figure of a young man
leaned against a fruit basket. In the Kalwaria landscapes by Weiss the nature becomes a great, sunny orchard where Ceres the
goddess of harvest and crop rules. We сап see her in the so entitled picture of 1916 where she appears at the border of the forest
and fields with a sickle in her hand, a fruit basket on her shoulders, accompanied by Cupids. The classical motives are continued
in such pictures as „Three Grâces" (1916), „Narcissus" (1919), „Venus" (1916), „Venus and Cupid" (1917). In thèse pictures
Weiss leads a hidden dialog with the old masters. The monumentalized three grâces of slightly geometrized shapes are as a far
echo of „The group of five women bathing" by Cézanne. „Venus" of 1919 is a readible travesty of the picture „Venus and Cupid
before a mirror" by Diego Velazquez. The climax of the classieizing tendency in the work of Weiss is the picture „The Muses"
of 1927, for which Weiss has made studies and sketches only. „The Muses" were intended for the plafonds of the Wawel castle
and as resuit of clashes with the employers they have not been realised. The goddesses of art taken from a low observation point
have been presented in the foreground of a landscape dominated by the sky. In the „Ceres" painted ten years earlier the goddess
of harvest accompanies the rich nature, she is an allegory complementing its splendour. In „The Muses" the proportions have been
diverted. This time the nature is accompanying art.
In the académie year 1918-1919 Weiss was appointed the first rector of the Cracow Academy in the independent Poland. In
the period between the two world wars many artists to become famous in the future worked in his studio (Fedkowicz, Eibisch,
Nacht Samborski). Together with his students he paints plain-airs in Zakopane, Bukowina, Puławy. He obtains many awards,
among them a golden medal for the picture „Publicity" at the Jubilee Exhibition of the Society of the Fine Arts Friends (TPSP)
in Warsaw. His authority in unshakable in the circles of the people of art. In this period he is known first of all as the painter of
féminine nudes. He makes hundreds of them and like a virtuoso he looks for especially difficult and interesting compositions of
229
point in the work of Weiss. The landscapes in pastel made in Italy are bright and at the same time dim, like a wall-painting. In
the diffuse light there keep still the outlines of cypresses, ancient columns, ruins. The gloomy, orgiastic processions known from
the earlier compositions by Weiss change into joyful, Dionysical cortèges with little Bacchus carried over the heads of the crowd.
The portraits too are slowly loosing their expressionist, concentrated tone, for instance the nostalgie and defined by a délicate
sfumato „Portrait of Perzyński" (1901). By 1905, probably under the influence of Leon Wyczółkowski, Weiss créâtes a séries of
portraits of country women, colouristically dominated by tones of duli red, ginger, and blue. Their colouring becomes more
décorative and its natural carrier is the elear line of the contour. The extatic rythmes calm down to pass into milder and more
harmonious structures. The color becomes duli, and at the same time cleaner. Gray and limy white becomes slowly predominating.
In the oeuvre of Weiss „the white period" begins and will last from 1905 to 1912. It is connected inseparably with Kalwaria, by
Cracow, where the artist's father has bought a smali house situated in a big orchard. It's there that the artist will soon settle down
with his young wife Irène, it's also there that he'll create a family paradise, it's there that he'll paint the romantic portraits of his
parents in the light of a petrol lamp and the pictures of his wife caught stright away, during her domestic occupations: sewing,
toilette or sleep, quite often framed in a Japanese way. Japan in Kalwaria? Weiss got in touch with Japanese art at the instance
of its greatest Polish collector and master Feliks Manggha Jasieński, whose portrait he painted in 1903. It is also from him that
a considérable collection of Japanese woodeuts reached the artist's studio. The fascination with the art of Japan seems to be a key
to understanding the art of the „white period". The landscapes painted in Kalwaria are created first of all in the nearest surroun-
ding of the house, in the old orchard; they are practically a visualization of oceurences in Spring and Winter, the seasons preferred
by the artist, when the natural colouring is dominated by gray and white. In this case the inspirations with the colouring of the
Japanese woodeut are readable, for instance the landscapes by I.Hiroshige lost in the silent snow whiteness, or elear, unfilled
spaces of compositions remaining the active role of empty space used in the Japanese art. In the „white period" the most fasci-
nating subject for Weiss is the commonplaceness of Kalwaria organically connected with the rythms of the living nature. The
nearest, the most banal becomes the most interesting: a hen scratching among the been pods, a cat basking in the sun, a branch
of an apple-tree breaking out into blossom. A fragmentary way thèse motives have been treated in, their compositional retrench-
ment, situating them quite often on the diagonal of a picture - thèse are again the means of expression borrowed from the Japanese
art. Thèse compositions are like short haiku written in praise of the nature. Weiss becomes its génial stenographer. This steno-
graphy is at the same time the most personal art, never exposed in the artist's life-time, and not hiding anything. In the Weiss'
pictures of the „white period" the intimate space of the house interior is opened on the space of the nature, the space of the
adjacent garden. And once more in the views from the window composed in a Japanese way, fragments of the garden from beyond
the frame of the picture are reflected in the panes of the open Windows. On the window-sill there are fruits, a cat is basking.
A grape-vine branch is looking inside. The border between the inside and the outside is called in question. There remains a joyful
expérience of a homogenous, luminous phenomenon of the nature.
In 1913 Weiss is made a professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. In 1914 he is awarded the Bavarian Order of
St.Michael and the Order of the Austrian Iron Crown. From 1915 on he is occupied in sculpturing, creating over ten féminine nudes
and busts. He paints mainly landscapes of Kalwaria and studio-nudes. In 1915-1916 the artist reaches climax in presenting the many
times painted insolated orchard of Kalwaria. His wife Irena is hanging out rugs or picking fruit. The family gathers by tea under an
old walnut tree. The parents are sitting in the shadow of an enormous pear tree. In the art of Weiss of this period the classical motives
appear. All the time in his artistic work Weiss leads a dialog with the antiquity and with the art of old masters. The dialog begins
with drawings of the académie plaster figures and the compétitive composition „Odysseus in the depths of the Hades" (1894) (Weiss
breaks here with the traditional, Winckelmann's vision of the antiquity) and is continued in pictures illustrating motives and plots
taken from the mythology: „A faun dancing with a girl" (1897), „A Procession with Bacchus" (1901), „Bachanalia" (1903),
„Perseus" (1904), dances similar to painted by Matisse, showed in the water-colours of 1910-1912, the picture „The rape of
nymphs" of 1911. Even in the intimacy of the „white period" we сап find a picture where Irène having a rest is accompanied by
Cupid - a boy with a child's bow (1909). In the séquence of thèse ,,antique" motives the especially important picture is one
entitled „Fruits", of 1913, awarded with the Probes Barczewski prize. It présents a monumentalized nude figure of a young man
leaned against a fruit basket. In the Kalwaria landscapes by Weiss the nature becomes a great, sunny orchard where Ceres the
goddess of harvest and crop rules. We сап see her in the so entitled picture of 1916 where she appears at the border of the forest
and fields with a sickle in her hand, a fruit basket on her shoulders, accompanied by Cupids. The classical motives are continued
in such pictures as „Three Grâces" (1916), „Narcissus" (1919), „Venus" (1916), „Venus and Cupid" (1917). In thèse pictures
Weiss leads a hidden dialog with the old masters. The monumentalized three grâces of slightly geometrized shapes are as a far
echo of „The group of five women bathing" by Cézanne. „Venus" of 1919 is a readible travesty of the picture „Venus and Cupid
before a mirror" by Diego Velazquez. The climax of the classieizing tendency in the work of Weiss is the picture „The Muses"
of 1927, for which Weiss has made studies and sketches only. „The Muses" were intended for the plafonds of the Wawel castle
and as resuit of clashes with the employers they have not been realised. The goddesses of art taken from a low observation point
have been presented in the foreground of a landscape dominated by the sky. In the „Ceres" painted ten years earlier the goddess
of harvest accompanies the rich nature, she is an allegory complementing its splendour. In „The Muses" the proportions have been
diverted. This time the nature is accompanying art.
In the académie year 1918-1919 Weiss was appointed the first rector of the Cracow Academy in the independent Poland. In
the period between the two world wars many artists to become famous in the future worked in his studio (Fedkowicz, Eibisch,
Nacht Samborski). Together with his students he paints plain-airs in Zakopane, Bukowina, Puławy. He obtains many awards,
among them a golden medal for the picture „Publicity" at the Jubilee Exhibition of the Society of the Fine Arts Friends (TPSP)
in Warsaw. His authority in unshakable in the circles of the people of art. In this period he is known first of all as the painter of
féminine nudes. He makes hundreds of them and like a virtuoso he looks for especially difficult and interesting compositions of