The artist was born on November 21, 1893 in Mińsk, Bialorussia. He was the eldest son of a Polish family, though his father was a Lieutenant Colonel of the Tsarist Army. Strzemiński’s first encounter with modern art took place during his studies in Sankt Petersburg. He graduated from Tsar Alexander II Cadet School before studying at a Tsar Nicholas Military College of Engineering (1911–1914). In the middle of 1922, Strzemiński and Katarzyna Kobro – his wife – left the Soviet Smolensk and came to Poland. The events which undermined their and many other artists’ belief in value of art fully expressing the ideas of victory of new forms might have influenced their decision to settle down in Poland. In autumn 1931 Strzemiński moved to Łódź. Following the opening of the International Collection of Modern Art at the Łódź, Strzemiński was offered a teaching position in Łódź. Almost from the beginning Strzemiński was surrounded by young artists, graduates of art schools in Warsaw and Kraków (Stefan Wegner, Aniela Menkes, Jerzy Ryszard Krause, Bolesław Hochlinger). He was their teacher and master. The Public School was not only a place which offered additional training for printers and house-painters, but also the meeting place and studio where theoretical programs and exhibitions were prepared. Strzemiński taught typography and the principles of functioning printing. Another group of students who studied with Strzemiński was recommended to him by Mojżesz Broderson and Jankel Adler. It was the group of very young Jewish students: Samuel Szczekacz, Julian Lewin and Pinkus Szwarc. They started a private evening course at the Public School of Technical Training No. 10 in Łódź. The intensive art course attended by thise group included practical elements inspired by the image-making and spatial form techniques developed by Pablo Picasso, Kazimierz Malewicz, Piet Mondrian, Strzemiński and Kobro, and Jean Arp. These forms of art are known as cubism, unism, nepolasticism, suprematism and surrealism. Strzemiński and Kobro spent the summer 1939 together with their daughter Nika in Hel Peninsula. When the war broke-out, they left Łódź and headed East, where they spent the sever winter of 1939/1940. The first war series of drawings was created there. In May 1940 the artists came back to Łódź/Litzmannstadt. The first 3 months after the invasion of the city by the German was a period of massive extermination, including creation of Łódź ghetto. The Strzemińskis, without work, prosecuted for their revolutionary artistic activities tried to survive; at the end of war Strzemiński was seriously ill. In this period artist the artist drew a series of six drawings made in pencil on paper (“Deportation”). The drawings made in a winding line and showing deformed, as if deprived of the structure human beings, created the artist’s auto-commentary. After the series “Deportation” he created the next series “War Against Homes” (1941) and Faces, which consist of closed forms drawn in thin, wavy line suggesting eyeless human faces composed of fragmented facial features of anonymous people. Then the series “Cheap as Mad” (1942–1944) was created. These drawings were produced during the war and are highly deformed, drawn in one contour of an amorphous line. The last cycle connected with war and the Holocaust was a series of collages dedicated “To My Friends the Jews”. He re-used copied by carbon paper war drawings of the previous series as a matrix. The artistic technique used here by Strzemiński touches the primary, in relation to the Holocaust. The Holocaust should exist for us as „an empty place”, one which cannot be possessed by means of the metaphor. This place of lack or the fissure is filled here with documentary photographs, which give the evidence and confirm the extermination. At the bottom there is the cut out photo showing a charred corpse. The sketchy line and the charred corpse are joined together by the red color of splutter of blood. In other works of this series the artist used a photographic document showing children from an orphanage in the Litzmannstadt ghetto in the company of their caregivers going in pairs to the extermination camp in Chełmno. Mendel Grossman was a Jewish photographer in Łódź/Litzmannstadt ghetto and author of one of a few photographes used by Strzemiński (“The Empty Shinbones of the Crematoria”). Strzemiński used in his collages also the documentary photographs printed in Polish newspapers, edited between 1945 and 1946. It was the time of Nuremberg Trials, and the time when the pictures made by photographers of the US Army at time of liberation of concentration camps were published [”Stretched by the Strings of Legs and Vow and Oath to the Memory of Hands (The Existence which We Do Not Know)”]. Strzemiński also used the photographs from „The Stroop Report” – 75-page official report and a series of approximately 52 photographs prepared in May 1943 by the commander of the forces that liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto. The art work titled “With the Ruins of Demolished Eye Sockets” presents a solitary man among the ruins of Warsaw Ghetto, and is from „The Stroop Report”. Strzemiński rejected Communism in the 20ies and then Fascism in the 30ies but didn’t find the canon, which could negate his feeling of helplessness and nonsense, losing himself in a lack of form of his war drawings. This series of Strzemiński analyzed from the distance of few decades makes a suggestive, forceful and permanent picture of emptiness and void, which he tried to fill with the state of mourn and sadness.
PL
Celem niniejszego opracowania jest przedstawienie i pogłębiona interpretacja unikalnego w dorobku Władysława Strzemińskiego (1893–1952) i w ogóle historii sztuki, zespołu prac zatytułowanego Moim przyjaciołom Żydom (1945/1946?). Moim zadaniem było wykazanie jak na tle koncepcji awangardy artystycznych XX w., których Strzemiński był głównym ideologiem i twórcą, kształtowały się losy tego artysty, jego przyjaźni, fascynacji artystycznych, zaangażowania w życie społeczne oraz jak – w obliczu wydarzeń II wojny światowej i Zagłady – idealistyczne, niespełnione marzenia uległy ostatecznemu, jak uważał, zniszczeniu. Podstawowym zadaniem było dokonanie niejako nowej interpretacji cyklu poprzez skupienie uwagi na kontekście historycznym, politycznym i społecznym, które uwarunkowały powstanie cyklu dziesięciu kolaży.
Hans Memling was born in the region of the Middle Rhine. He worked in Cologne and Brussels before purchasing Bruges’ citizenship in 1465. His art, while deeply influenced by the paintings of Jan van Eyck and Roger van der Weyden, is characterized by calm seriousness, luminous colours, perfect composition and – what is the most important – deep knowledge of theological medieval doctrine of Last Judgment. Central wing: Christ appears in evangelical guise seated on rainbow, his feet resting on a glistening globe, surrounded by the apostles and intercessors Madonna and John the Baptist. The rainbow separates the two worlds and their different orders; the golden space of God’s Kingdom appears at the top, while the earth, represented as a wide plain enclosed in the distance by a chain of mountains, is shown at the background. This is the valley of Josephat, which, according to the apocryphal author – Honorius Augustoduenesis of Autun, “Elucidarius sive dialogues de summa totius chrisianae theolgiae”, PL 172, 1165C and James de Voragine, “Legenda Aurea” – will be the site of The Last Judgment. The time of day is fixed by the dark blue-green night (it is midnight) sky. All the figures are pictured on a cloud that continues right to the gates of paradise, and left to the hell. The angels (as tradition says) with the instruments of the Passion hover above this divine assembly; the four angels blowing their apocalyptic trumpets. The figure of St Michael stands on the earth directly below Christ, on the axis mundi. He is holding the scales in his left hand, he uses the crosier as a spear in his right hand to puncture the flesh of the condemned soul. The iconography of the altarpiece is clarified by its destination. St Michael has been selected here first and primary as the saint to whom the chapel was dedicated (Angelo di Jacopo Tani – the donor of altarpiece founded a chapel in Fiesole devoted to St Michael and drew up his will). On the right, St Peter leads the small crowd of righteous up a crystal staircase to the gates of paradise. The procession is headed by a pope, a cardinal and a bishop. On the chasuble of the bishop we can see the small, almost hidden and faint but really important picture of Annunciation. This „hidden” “Annunciation”, image of creation of Eve from the rib of Adam (tympanum in gate of paradise), and Madonna kneeling before Christ in central panel of Memling’s triptych – is a holy narrative about our history of Redemption and extraordinal role in it. The important problems which are analyzed in this article are the issue of influences on Memling’s work by other painters (Jan van Eyck, Hugo van der Goes, Roger van der Weyden, Dieric Bouts), the problem of nudity in his pictures, the iconography of “Last Judgement”, images of light, „Judge as a fulfillment of judiciary”, reflection and mirror, space and movement in the picture.
Les Expositions universelles mondiales, inaugurées en France au XVIIIe siècle, résultaient du développement de l'industrie mécanique moderne. On amassait les inventions nouvelles pour les comparer et vérifier les possibilités de leur application. L'Exposition mondiale de Paris en 1900 lut la plus grande entreprise du gouvernement bourgeois de la France contemporaine. Plusieurs actions d'administration et d'organisation l'avaient précédée. Les plus connus architectes français prirent part au concours qui avait pour but l’aménagement du territoire de l'Exopsition. On a installé l'Exposition dans cinq lieux principaux de Paris: le Champ de Mars, les bords de la Seine, les Champs Elyisées, l’espace autour du Palais des Invalides, le Palais de Trocadéro. Le premier prix fut décerné à: Eduard Paulin, Charles Girault, Gaston Henard, auteurs du plan général de l ’Exposition. Les places suivantes furent prises par: Cassier Bernard, Gaston Cousien, Charles A. Gautier, Sortais, Larchej Nachon, G. Raulin. Blavette, Esquie, André Rey, Tronche, Toudoir et Pradelle gagnèrent le troisième prix équivalent. C'est le jury tranchant le concours qui décidait du plan final et de l'extérieur de l'Exposition. De tous les travaux couronnés on choisit tout ce qu’on trouvait parfait et le plus convenable iaux besoins de l’Exposition. Le plan général réalisé c'était une compilation de tous les travaux couronnés, c'était une o euw e commune des architectes et urbanistes français de la fin du XIX® sièclel Ce qui caractérisait tous !ces travaux c'était l'application conséquente de la symétrie et des plans axiaux qui arrangeaient ce grand espace, déterminé par la disposition harmonieuse des allées, des pavillons, des jardins, dés palais et des ponts. Les édifices principaux: Pont Alexandre III, Grand Palais tet Petit Palais prévus comme les objets d'utilité publique (musées d'art français), introduits avec soin dans le paysage de Paris, constituent l'unique témoignage matériel durable de l'Exposition de 1900. Les deux bâtiments représentent le grand style de Louis XVI, le style des ordres classiques de colonnes. La construction moderne avec l'emploi du verre, du fer et du béton fut voiiée par le grés blanc, le marbre et le basalte. Les projets proposant les larges espaces, la (régularité, la symétrie très stricte remportèrent la victoire. L'ordre éternel, la perfection, la permanence historique furent enfermés dans la structure moderne en fer, en verre et en béton — matériaux du XXe siècle.