Księga Twarzy. Rysunki Brunona Schulza w Bystrzycy Kłodzkiej

Abstract

Bruno Schulz’s drawings in which we may find the faces of his friends and colleagues, the students and teachers of the Drogobych high school, have been scattered. Most of them perished during World War II. Some of those which have been preserved now belong to private collections. Thanks to a favorable coincidence, some pencil sketches by Schulz have been found in such a collection. They show an intriguing young woman, Stanisława Szczepańska, who in 1934-1936 worked as an unpaid teacher at the Drogobych high school. There she met Schulz who drew her portraits during school breaks as well as during lessons, when he would come in, take a seat in the last row, and draw her face. Until now little has been known about Szczepańska. After so many years it is worth disclosing a secret: who was she? What happened to her later? How did it happen that Schulz noticed her? How was it possible to save the drawings? The present paper provides answers to these and many other questions as the author has made an attempt to show how Szczepańska’s biography became a part of Schulz’s artistic heritage. Pencil sketches definitely belong to a more general project of the Drogobych artist as exercises in portraying faces both in drawing and fiction. Studying faces was very important to Schulz. In his work, the drawing practice and fiction are closely related to each other. To find out more about them, it is essential to find and save Schulz’s scattered works. This postulate has been articulated in the paper supplemented with the reproductions of Schulz’s sketches and photographs from the Hoffmann family collection. The portraits of Szczepańska tell a unique story – about charm, the art of seeing, and Schulz’s Book of Faces.