DOI Heft:
Część IV. Sztuka XX i XXI wieku / Part IV. Art of the Twentieth and Twenty First Century
DOI Artikel:Pietrasik, Agata: Żałoba nie przystoi Elektrze. O (nie)pamięci wojny w dziele Felicjana Szczęsnego Kowarskiego
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.45362#0384
Agata Pietrasik Mourning Does Not Become Electra. On the (Non)memory of War...
383
Kowarski, similarly fascinated with the triumph of the sun over the ruins of war, chose
daylight as the leitmotif of his two final works. According to Bogucki, the initial version of
Electra was monochrome, based on the contrast between white and grey: “Kowarski later re-
painted the composition, adding a hovering Cupid with a bow in the upper right corner and
introducing colour and life to the background with the stormy shapes of clouds.”54 Bogucki
did not have a positive opinion on those changes, while the well-meaning commentators of
the artist’s oeuvre passed over the Cupid figure with silence. The Cupid is turned with his
back to the viewer, his bow aimed at the sun rising beyond the ruins. Thereby, he sentences
the melancholy Electra to love of the new day, amorfati, and consequently - to oblivion.
Of all of Kowarski’s other works, Electra is most similar to a drawing entitled Israeli Woman
(1947-48, fig. 6),55 which also depicts a woman dressed in stylized ancient robes sitting among
ruins. Her pose does not express melancholy, like Electra’s, but frozen despair.56 Behind the
female figure we see ruins, above them - an overcast sky. Electra is a reversal of this dramatic
representation. Mourning does not become the figure flooded in the light of a sunny day, in
a bright shade of blue “without a history or past.” Her share is everlasting melancholy, which
allows her to perceive war destruction like “a sketch of Piranesi’s” and experience contemporary
reality through a return to antiquity. To quote Morelowski again, light becomes a medium of
“taking roots, despite all losses and ruins”57 and of oblivion, which funds the discourse of the
triumphant return of life.
Translated by Aleksandra Szkudłapska
54 Bogucki, Kowarski, op. cit., p. 1.
55 The National Museum in Warsaw, inv. no. Rys.W.10212 MNW.
56 For the iconography of representations of melancholy see Erwin Panofsky, Raymond Kalibanksy, Fritz
Saxl, Saturn i Melancholia. Studia z historii,filozofii, przyrody, medycyny, religii oraz sztuki (Warsaw, 2009).
57 As cited in: Iwaszkiewicz, Teatralia, op. cit., p. 102.
383
Kowarski, similarly fascinated with the triumph of the sun over the ruins of war, chose
daylight as the leitmotif of his two final works. According to Bogucki, the initial version of
Electra was monochrome, based on the contrast between white and grey: “Kowarski later re-
painted the composition, adding a hovering Cupid with a bow in the upper right corner and
introducing colour and life to the background with the stormy shapes of clouds.”54 Bogucki
did not have a positive opinion on those changes, while the well-meaning commentators of
the artist’s oeuvre passed over the Cupid figure with silence. The Cupid is turned with his
back to the viewer, his bow aimed at the sun rising beyond the ruins. Thereby, he sentences
the melancholy Electra to love of the new day, amorfati, and consequently - to oblivion.
Of all of Kowarski’s other works, Electra is most similar to a drawing entitled Israeli Woman
(1947-48, fig. 6),55 which also depicts a woman dressed in stylized ancient robes sitting among
ruins. Her pose does not express melancholy, like Electra’s, but frozen despair.56 Behind the
female figure we see ruins, above them - an overcast sky. Electra is a reversal of this dramatic
representation. Mourning does not become the figure flooded in the light of a sunny day, in
a bright shade of blue “without a history or past.” Her share is everlasting melancholy, which
allows her to perceive war destruction like “a sketch of Piranesi’s” and experience contemporary
reality through a return to antiquity. To quote Morelowski again, light becomes a medium of
“taking roots, despite all losses and ruins”57 and of oblivion, which funds the discourse of the
triumphant return of life.
Translated by Aleksandra Szkudłapska
54 Bogucki, Kowarski, op. cit., p. 1.
55 The National Museum in Warsaw, inv. no. Rys.W.10212 MNW.
56 For the iconography of representations of melancholy see Erwin Panofsky, Raymond Kalibanksy, Fritz
Saxl, Saturn i Melancholia. Studia z historii,filozofii, przyrody, medycyny, religii oraz sztuki (Warsaw, 2009).
57 As cited in: Iwaszkiewicz, Teatralia, op. cit., p. 102.