Grottger
April 5-May 11, 2008
The exhibition of dozens of works by Artur Grottger – an outstanding painter whose extraordinarily beautiful and evocative insurgent and martyrological paintings became the canon of national iconography of that time – is an unprecedented event, due to the presentation – only in the Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola – of a dozen works by Grottger from the Lviv Art Gallery, including the famous diptych Welcome to the Insurgent and Farewell to the Insurgent.
In addition, the exhibition will include sketches, drawings, oil paintings and watercolors from more than a dozen museums in Poland and private collections. A variety of themes in the great artist’s work will be shown – historical and symbolic, as well as portraits or lyrical landscapes. There will be no shortage of personal threads – as there are self-portraits, images of family members and friends, while the portrait of Wanda Monné, the artist’s fiancée, recalls the story of their romantic, unusual love, unfortunately without a happy ending. Grottger died at the age of just 30.
Artur Grottger (1837-1867), who was one of the leading representatives of Romanticism in Polish painting, creator of the unique iconography of the January Uprising and the martyrdom of Poles in Siberia – is one of the most popular Polish artists. He is the author of the magnificent historical cycles Warsaw I, Warsaw II, Polonia, Lithuania, which are already in the canon of Polish art, and which perpetuated in the imagination of many generations the scenes of insurgent battles and the idea of national solidarity.
Painter, draughtsman, illustrator in his extremely prolific work combines the aesthetic tenets of academism with romanticism, emotion and violent sentimentality, while rendering every detail realistically. Building strong chiaroscuro, softly modeling the drawing, Grottger at the same time introduced theatricality of gestures, often idealizing the depicted figures. This is particularly evident in his portraits, where in addition to representative images (Panny Dzieduszyckie, 1866), he created sentimental depictions of women, as well as psychological portraits of family members and friends (Portrait of Maria Sawiczewska, 1866). The artist’s expressive language is marked in his blunt portrait studies of villagers (Peasant of Barszczowice, 1860).
Other motifs of Grottger’s work were genre and allegorical representations, and the motif of the horse often appeared, sketched during his numerous travels. The landscapes were characterized by lyrical poetics, sentimentalism and a certain deepened moodiness. There is also a fascination with the Orient (Cherokee with a spear, 1860).
The artist showed a penchant for cyclic representations, mainly historical series, and undoubtedly the main motif of his work was martyrological themes and cycles of works depicting the tragedy of death. In large historical cartoons, he depicts motifs of mourning and disability, and creates a special image of a Polish woman supporting the national liberation struggle.
The best-known patriotic works are not the only ones in his rich oeuvre. Among other things, Grottger is the author of the little-known but unique in Polish art Large Album drawn for his fiancée Wanda Monné.
Curator of the exhibition: Anna Król
Coordination: Anna Szlazak
