EN
The Author analyses the image of Józef Chełmoński’s oeuvre as shaped by artistic criticism over the period of Socialist Realism in 1949-56. The leading role in the process can be attributed to ‘Przegląd Artystyczny’, an official magazine of the State Institute of Art and Association of Polish Artists, published in Cracow. However, judging on the grounds of a number publications over the period, Chełmoński was not as strongly promoted by the followers of Socialist Realism as, for example, Jan Matejko, since ‘pure landscape’ which he cultivated, particularly in the latter period, never matched the ideology claiming that paintings should feature a human ‘consciously transforming nature’, this shown in the spirit of ‘critical realism’. The painter of the Indian Summer, though included in the circle of artists close to ‘realism’ in art, was never as highly appreciated as, for instance, Józef Szermentowski or Aleksander Kotsis, which may have resulted from Chełmoński’s excessively strong, as judged at the time, bond with the national and patriotic traditions, while not with the tendencies of supranational ‘social criticism’.