In his paintings, there is a human depth that flows not only from keen observation but also from a certain brotherly tenderness, a kind of clairvoyant kindness, which allows the artist to see timelessness, capturing character and preserving what is eternal (Louis Léon-Martin, 1932).
A dominant feature of Tadeusz Makowski’s (1882–1932) original work as a painter and graphic artist is this remarkable ability, mentioned by Léon-Martin, to preserve the eternal. However, before the artist found this skill, he freely changed the character of his works.
Initially, during his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow (1903–1908), under the influence of his teacher Jan Stanisławski, he painted small landscape studies—japonizing scenes from Brittany and the Tatra Mountains. At times, almost in defiance of Stanisławski, he painted solitary, withering sunflowers—interpretations of the theme of kachō-ga (pictures of flowers and birds)—in enormous, life-sized forms. An interesting example of Japanese inspiration is the painting Girl and Chinese Figures from around 1906, in which the girl’s face seems to transpose a nō theater mask, and the flexible line marking the flat area of her dress directly references ukiyo-e woodblock prints. Landscapes, Girl and Chinese Figures, and Sunflowers seem to engage in a playful confrontation with the pervasive japonism of the Young Poland period.
In 1908, the artist closed the Japanese chapter and moved to Paris. He worked intensively and fell under various fascinations, as he would tell Marcin Samlicki in 1927: “the continuous search for new paths is the road to perfection.” He became interested in the symbolic, classicizing painting of Puvis de Chavannes, known for his monumental frescoes in the Pantheon, as well as naïve artists and Cubists. Gradually, he constructed his own original vision of painting, co-creating the École de Paris. He lived in Paris and regularly traveled to Brittany, Normandy, and Auvergne.
He befriended leading figures of the avant-garde, including Henri Le Fauconnier, whose studio around 1910 became a meeting place for the “Cubists of Montparnasse,” including Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Fernand Léger, Alexander Archipenko, Piet Mondrian, and Guillaume Apollinaire. Inspired by their work, he painted geometrized compositions—still lifes and landscapes. He was not a Cubist and did not create a distinct pictorial structure; however, his adaptation of and inspiration from primitive art allowed him to develop his individual style, which was recognizable and unique.
Makowski created his own form of the human figure, resembling a wooden puppet or marionette, stylized, naïve, and lyrical. He portrayed his models—children—equipped with various props such as masks, lanterns, and musical instruments, all wearing characteristic triangular, pointed hats, set against simplified, conventional landscapes and interiors. “Thanks to these elements of grotesque,” Tadeusz Makowski said, “one can be more human than in pure realism.” In 1936, while analyzing the artist’s paintings, Mieczysław Wallis wrote:
In one of Makowski’s paintings, two children tenderly embrace. This gesture is strangely moving, perhaps because— or rather, precisely because—the figures of these children are constructed from spheres, cones, pyramids, rectangles, and circles. This infinite delicacy, tenderness, and profoundly human, childlike gesture strikes even more powerfully in these puppets. […] The paradox of the mask, and perhaps all non-realist art, is that the more it distances itself from reality, the more intensely and suggestively it captures certain traits of reality. A mask, which seemingly obscures, may sometimes reveal the most essential features of the person who wears it. Makowski uncovered this secret of the mask.
Alongside painting, from the outset of his career, Makowski also engaged in graphic art, contributing to the foundations of Polish artistic graphics in Krakow. He was particularly interested in the technique of woodcut, to which he consistently returned. In this medium, he drew inspiration from folk cut-outs, reliefs, and Podhale glass painting, as well as from prints from Épinal, which fascinated enthusiasts of block prints. Toward the end of his life, he reinterpreted motifs from his works in metal techniques such as etching, aquatint, and drypoint.
In addition to his artistic legacy, Tadeusz Makowski left behind many sketches in manuscript form, the most valuable of which are Notes on Art and a diary kept from 1912 to 1931, published in 1961 under the title Diary.
Scenario and Arrangement: Anna Król
Exhibition Coordination: Regional Museum in Stalowa Wola, Magdalena Kołtunowicz
Co-organizer of the exhibition: District Museum in Toruń.
