Alphonse Karpinski Painting Gallery
The scenario of the exhibition is built on the basis of the collection of the artist’s works from the Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola, complemented by works from private collections and other museums.
The exhibition includes 78 works of the artist, as many as 67 works come from the collection of the Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola, the remaining 11 are deposits and loans. A total of 33 oil paintings, 36 drawings, 2 prints, 5 watercolors and 2 pastels are on display.
Three places were important to Karpinski – cities with which he was connected in various ways: Rozwadów, the place of his birth (and his symbolic return through the opening of a permanent exhibition), Krakow, the place of his studies and many years of activity, and Paris, the place where the painter’s most important works were created. However, when seen from the perspective of the 21st century, Karpinski’s artistic oeuvre is invariably dominated by two themes: studies and portraits of women and atmospheric still lifes. Therefore, it is around these that the exhibition’s narrative is built.
And so, in seven intertwining problem spaces, these very selected places and themes, characteristic of Alfons Karpinski’s life and work, are presented: I. Rozwadów Station, II. Workshop, III. Krakow: Young Poland, IV. Paris – in the circle of Japanese inspirations, V. Woman, VI. Still Life, the exhibition closes with VII. Annex showing Karpinski’s activities in the War Graves Unit during World War I.
In addition to the traditional exhibition, the gallery shows, thanks to new technologies, selected works of the painter and has the opportunity to listen to the artist’s memories. In addition, the interior of the artist’s studio has been arranged in the gallery space.
I. ROZWADÓW STATION
The exhibition opens with a space presenting Rozwadów – Karpinski’s birthplace, the site of his museum.
Rozwadów, Wadowice, Jordanów are my childhood. The world in those days (1875-1885) boarded up. […] I remember one magazine at home, it seems “The World”, on the walls of my parents’ apartment two “landszafty” and two portraits of my grandparents, family mementos, not works of art. […] Being cut off in the deep provinces produces in this environment any lack of artistic interest (Memoirs, p. 1).
The title refers and refers to the permanent exhibition at the Rozwadów Station Regional Museum. Between Lviv and Krakow.
II. WORKSHOP / ART EDUCATION
Cracow, Munich, Vienna
The artist studied for a relatively long time, in various centers – Krakow, Munich, Vienna – where he received a careful academic education. Karpinski’s academic studies from the Vienna academy from 1906 have been preserved. These testify to the artist’s excellent, realistic technique.
A brief introduction on the principles of training at the 19th century academy (primarily a study of a living model in various poses).
Subsequent, intertwining spaces depict two remarkable places: Krakow and Paris and the works associated with them.
III. KRAKOW: YOUNG POLAND
Karpinski co-created the phenomenon of Young Poland, actively and intensively participated in the cultural life of Krakow; he succumbed to both the symbolism of the late 19th century and the fascination with the folklore of Krakow’s suburbs.
Michalik’s Den and the Green Balloon
Alfons Karpinski was a frequent visitor to Jama Michalik, the most famous artistic café where Krakow bohemians met; he actively participated in the activities of the Zielony Balonik cabaret.
IV. PARIS – IN THE CIRCLE OF JAPANESE INSPIRATIONS / WOMAN
Excerpt from Memoirs of an Artist:
Paris at that time was insanely picturesque and, in view of the variety of impressions, very artistically exciting. Monuments, magnificent art galleries, types of human misery nomadizing under bridges, types of artists, models, students, workers, different nationalities and races. Streets with double-decker omnibuses with a harness of three gray horses. Restaurants, cafes and pubs with a clientele that is direct and casual in behavior (Memoirs, pp. 14-15).
The views of Parisian streets and bridges are dominated by modes of composition characteristic of Japanese woodcuts: showing a fragment, a frame of the cityscape (Bridge in Paris, 1909), bird’s-eye shots (Circus in Paris, 1910) or silhouetted depiction of forms (Street in Paris, 1911). His fascination with Japanese art is summed up in one of his most important works, Jane with a Japanese Doll, 1909. Karpinski’s Japonism is also discernible in his small, almost stenographic landscapes from the Lido (1907-1908).
V. WOMEN
A Young Poland femme fatale, a Parisian model, a Cracovian actress or a cultural representative from a Cracovian society was the most important subject of Karpinski’s paintings.
Salon
The link between the Model and Salon spaces is a composition created in Paris, the most beautiful image of a woman in the collection of the Regional Museum – Portrait of Mrs. Pienkowska
Excerpt from Memories:
I painted actresses for myself, as well as other models. I painted Janina Zarzycka several times….
In this space we present salon-like, bourgeois portraits of women made both before World War I and in the interwar period.
Still life
Karpinski usually depicted a fragment of the living room interior with an exposed vase with a bouquet of flowers (yellow and white roses, peonies, chrysanthemums, poppies), porcelain, a piano, a clock. Light reflections and reflections become an important element of the representations. “The subject of the paintings, however, is not objects, but time flowing slowly in the silence of the bourgeois enclave, measured by the ticking of the clock and the falling of floral petals, the atmosphere of the isolated interior, saturated with memories” (Irena Kossowska). This special mood is brought out by Karpinski’s characteristic way of painting: he uses delicate sfumato, blurring the contours, blending the arranged props into the interior space.
VI. APPENDIX – WAR GRAVES DIVISION
An unknown episode in the artist’s work: the artist was active in a team of painters documenting war cemeteries in Western Galicia. Little known, but quite interesting works of the artist are created then. Offensive near Gorlice (Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola) like Fałatowski’s winter landscape is affected by the sadness of a lonely cross. Karpinski paints wounded soldiers, gray war cemeteries and old shrines. Paintings, watercolors, drawings – the artist’s painterly sketchbook is very nostalgic, full of anxiety. It shows a painter’s sense and sensitivity to the losses that war brings.
VII. THE ARTIST’S STUDIO
The space arranged as the artist’s room/workroom according to an archival photograph of Alfons Karpinski’s studio.
