A leap

Abstract

The sketches are the most important tool of memory for a painter. This belief is of particular importance in the case of Piotr Potworowski (1898–1962), the creator of the idiom of landscape painting, which is essential for Polish art and uses the language of abstraction. In his case, a sketch is, on the one hand, a more specific element of a complex artistic procedure related to memory mechanisms, and, on the other hand, it assumes the functions and a form of an independent trace that fits into the sequence of existential experiences. These aspects are fully expressed in the corpus of Potworowski’s sketches from 1952 to 1961, conceived as a whole, and contained in six 500-page volumes, which also includes notes of an intimate diary. Placed in a tin air suitcase, they are an archive of observations, reflections and expressions running between the artist’s life and work. From the perspective we take here, it is important that Potworowski’s writings contain ideas about the individual dimensions of the creative process, in which the issue of memory – although rarely taken directly – is one of the most important themes. The chapter contains a reconstruction of selected threads of the painter’s self-reflective thoughts on art and takes up the issue of the implementation of these postulates in artistic practice. It analyses the issues of microforming and autobiographical memory, temporal distance to the studied motif, contributing to the distillation of its visual form and different temporalities of the sketch and the image created on its basis.