Polish Art Research Articles

Abstrakcji przestrzeń wieloraka. Kategoria przestrzenności w twórczości Wojciecha Fangora, Jerzego Grabowskiego i Ryszarda Winiarskiego - studium porównawcze

If one were to indicate some tendencies characteristic of the art of the 20th century, the pursuit of making artwork more spatial would certainly be one of them. This tendency manifests itself in the myriad of symptoms: an avant-garde redefinition of sculpture with its negative space; a proliferation of kinetic works enabling spectators to (re)shape artwork’s matter more actively; a dissemination of ephemeral forms, especially happening and performance; beginnings of installation art, to mention but a few. The present paper sets out to examine an artistic phenomenon which is not as spectacular as the aforementioned examples, but it could be somehow placed at the intersection of them. One can consider the particular type of abstract painting, embedded in a pictorial plane and slightly opening for surrounding space, but simultaneously reconceptualising the relation between the imagined and the physically present. The first part of the article deals with methodology. As far as research is concerned, the author assumes moderate scientism as the methodological perspective. It is based on the belief that mathematical sciences throughout history have developed notions and analytical methods allowing the observable and communicable features of things, including artworks and artistic phenomena, to be explained in an effective way, i.e. more faithfully and usefully. Because of the fact that mathematical truths are not absolute, the methodological perspective is called ‘moderate’. Taking into account these assumptions, the second part of the article defines the analytical category of spatiality, which expresses painting’s ability to evoke variously conceptualised spaces. The three subsequent sections of the article are devoted to some paintings by three Polish artists active in the second half of the 20th century, i.e. Wojciech Fangor, Jerzy Grabowski, Ryszard Winiarski. Each of them combined two differently understood spatial orders in their works: physical (related to phenomenological and sensual experience) and conceptual (related to notions and theories proposed by exact sciences). Having analysed a number of paintings by Fangor, Grabowski and Winiarski, one can define notions of cosmogonic, transcendence and probabilistic space, respectively. In summary, the specificity of works analysed in the context of ideas drawn from exact sciences is examined.

Collecting Art in the Turmoil of War: Lithuania in 1939–1944

Summary The article deals with the growth of the art collections of the Lithuanian national and municipal museums during WWII, a period traditionally seen as particularly unfavourable for cultural activities. During this period, the dynamics of Lithuanian museum art collections were maintained by two main sources. The first was caused by nationalist politics, or, more precisely, one of its priorities to support Lithuanian art by acquiring artworks from contemporaries. The exception to this strategy is the attention given to the multicultural art scene of Vilnius, partly Jewish, but especially Polish art, which led to the purchase of Polish artists’ works for the Vilnius Municipal Museum and the Vytautas the Great Museum of Culture in Kaunas, which had the status of a national art collection. The second important source was the nationalisation of private property during the Soviet occupation of 1940–1941. This process enabled the Lithuanian museums to enrich their collections with valuable objets d’art first of all, but also with paintings, sculptures and graphic prints. Due to the nationalisation of manor property, the collections of provincial museums, primarily Šiauliai Aušra and Samogitian Museum Alka in Telšiai, significantly increased. The wave of emigration of Lithuanian citizens to the West at the end of the Second World War was also a favourable factor in expanding museum collections, as both artists and owners of their works left a number of valuables to museums as depositors. On the other hand, some museum valuables were transported from Vilnius to Poland in 1945–1948 by the wave of the so-called repatriation of former Vilnius residents who had Polish citizenship in 1930s. The article systematises previously published data and provides new information in order to reconstruct the dynamics of the growth of Lithuanian museum art collections caused by radical political changes, which took place in the mid 20th century.

Insects, Threads, and Urinals: Polymorphous Desire Flows in Krzysztof Jung’s Work

Abstract The 2019 retrospective of the work of the Polish artist Krzysztof Jung (1951–1998) at the Schwules Museum in Berlin positioned the artist as unequivocally gay in his preoccupation with the male nude. The artist’s body-oriented practice, however, expands far beyond strictly defined homosexual desire. In this article, I discuss complex entanglements of polymorphous desires present in Jung’s work. Introducing the narratives of prostheses, quantum entanglements, and entomology, I look at Jung’s performances known as nitkowania (threadings) and selected drawings in order to trace the free flows of desire beyond identity politics and distinctly disparate sexual categories. Employing posthumanist narratives of bodily extensions, I argue that the ambiguous body in Jung’s practice serves as the artist’s explorations of identity as always—already entangled with desire, sex, sociality, and performativity, and therefore inherently fluctuating and wavering, and blurring bodily boundaries. Through these narratives, I seek to enable an empathic, affective, turned on connections with Jung as the queer archival subject. Such visceral contact across time and space, through a queer archive, grants Jung and his performers agency as we attempt to sense them through their embodiment and through our own, and the fluctuating desire we may share with them, rather than through a limiting set of identity politics.

Applying the Avant-Garde: Display Experience in the Exhibition of Modern Art (1948)

The Exhibition of Modern Art (Wystawa Sztuki Nowoczesnej) organized in 1948 in the Palace of Art (Pałac Sztuki) in Cracow was one of the most prominent art events in Poland during the last century. It is considered one of the unprecedented moments in shaping the modernity. The exhibition was thought to be designed as a whole venture, integrating the modern art demonstration with the will to make it accessible to all the social groups. The desire of the authors was to endear the authorities, since the Stalinist repressions were approaching, and present the modern art as accessible to the society and needed in the “new socialist order”. Simultaneously, the primal context for the exhibition, underlined by its authors as well as the critics in subsequent years, were the surrealist exhibitions in Paris. This new avant-garde mode of displaying, so attractive for the Polish artists, put in the foreground not the traditional reception of art, implied by the traditional museology, but mostly focused on the spectator’s experience and used all possible kinds of tools to enhance it. These two approaches were usually presented as antagonistic and impossible to reconcile. The article attempts to analyze the tools which the display’s authors used to merge the avant-garde display with didacticism. While looking at the Recovered Territories Exhibition which took place a couple of months earlier, one might notice that the Exhibition of Modern Art was not the first display that accommodated the avant-garde solutions to the didactic and propagandistic venture.

„Времето“ като аспект в творбата (избрани примери от полско концептуално изкуство, собствени и студентски творби)

Attempting to visualize concept of “time” has a great tradition in contemporary art, in particular in conceptual art in the 20th century. The starting point for that consideration are conceptual activities in Polish contemporary art and their influence on the didactic program of teaching photography – the topics and selections taken for the visual structure of the work. Discussion on the example of selected works of Polish conceptual art of the 20th century, including the effects of the didactic process of the Photography and Multimedia Activities Studio that I run at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź. As a part of research and didactic observations, for many years students have been given the task of creating a visual work that shows the passage of time. The selection of photographic pictures and the method of working should be treated as an attempt to create a personal commentary on the surrounding reality. Students are choosing a theme, planning and recording over for a long period of time, for example a few weeks or months, the natural variability of the motif with particular emphasis on the type of light resulting from the time of day and the environment. The collections are presented in the form of a slide show, and the rhythm of the appearing photographs can be variable, consciously used as an additional artistic element. In the initial phase, the students discuss the selected issue and chosen artistic convention, while the technique and artistic form are free. In my own artistic work, too, the aspect of the “time” is an important factor. In many art works and art projects it is an important semantic element. Years later, I return to the same themes or places to reinterpret them and relate to the past. It concerns both the topic, issues and the composition of the visual implementation. Examples of artistic projects implemented over many years are cycles regarding the identity of the home city, for example “Postcards from Łódź”, “genius_lodzi” or “The Origin”.

The Architects of the Fontana Family in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The History of a Clan

At the turn of the eighteenth century, the newcomers of the Fontana family settled in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and eventually rallied a clan of architects and engineers based on family ties. In the middle of the eighteenth century, some of the individuals connected by familial ties resided in Warsaw and worked in the milieu of the royal court, but the zone of their activity and influence covered almost the whole territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the historiography of Polish art, the Fontanas and other architects related to them have been studied in some detail, but those family members who resided and worked in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania have not been adequately researched. The phenomenon of this clan is not featured in the circulation of the history of Lithuanian art, nor has its role in the evolution of eighteenth-century architecture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania been assessed. The biographical information on the Fontana family and the data on their architectural activities suggest that the Fontana family of architects, which operated in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, comprised a group based on kinship that consciously sought to firmly establish themselves and assert leadership in the field of architecture. In the eighteenth century, the architects of the Fontana family introduced the stylistic trend of “Classicist” Baroque to the architecture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This style encompassed the echoes of Northern Italian mannerism, ascetic and austere traditions of mature baroque of Rome, as well as ideas and variations of forms transformed in the milieu of Warsaw triggered by following such precursors as Tylman van Gameren. Classicist Baroque stimulated a wide response. In the eighteenth-century arena of baroque architecture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, it was competing against its main rival, the school of Vilnius Baroque.

Śródziemnomorskie kody polskości w twórczości Jana Parandowskiego

One is used to regarding Jan Parandowski (1895–1978) as a great connoisseur of the ancient world and a kind of “Olympic” writer with a distance to his own time and space. A thorough exam-ination of his literary essays, short stories and novels hardly proves this opinion. Treating Polish his-tory and culture, especially of the Renaissance epoch, as originating from and inspired by the ancient Roman/Greek tradition (“Poland is situated in the Mediterranean”), he conceals at the same time an evidently emotional approach to national legacy. There are several modes in which he evokes unique Polish history in the 19th century, with the great but problematic heritage of Romanticism as well as the controversial destiny of modern Polish artists obliged to fulfil national duties; he describes in classically discreet style Polish war experiences; he creates in different ways a sentimental image of his lost home country in Lwów. One of the clearest manifestos of the writer’s involvement in Polish identity can be also found in his defence of national sentiments and their qualities against the attitude presented in the famous work La Trahison des clercs (The treason of the intellectuals) by Julien Benda. According to Parandowski’s own declaration, his patriotism was responsive to aesthetic-al and sensory epiphany (geographical, landscape, etc. impressions) rather than to some abstract national symbols and declarations. There is also a close, mutual correspondence between ancient impulses in his work and his biography (Polish history); the writer has been frequently seeking for any consolation in Mediterranean utopian dimensions. Last but not least, the “postmortal” testimony of Polish identity in Parandowski’s biography and work seems to be related to the experience — for a long time unknown and only recently revealed — during his exile in revolutionary Soviet Russia; his pioneering study about “Bolshevism” documents the history of 20th-century totalitarianism and definitely denies the allegedly apolitical mind-set of the “Olympian.”

Compulsive collectors

Abstract Oscar-winning film director Andrzej Wajda (1929–2016) was an avid collector of all information relating to himself and his film-making. In 1978 he made a documentary film about a fellow collector, Ludwig Zimmerer (1924–1987), who accumulated thousands of paintings and objects of Polish folk art. This article tells the stories of these two men and their collections. I suggest that an investigation into the lives and times of Wajda and Zimmerer can shed new light on the psychological processes that inform collecting. Rather than dismissing the compulsion to collect as a product of neurosis, as some previous interpretations have done, I argue here that we should read it as a productive and compensatory method for curing addictions.

Dark Times: Art and Artists of Vilnius in 1939–1941


 
 
 The aim of this paper is to discuss and reconstruct in general features the reality of the Vilnius artistic community from late autumn 1939 to June 1941. This period of less than two years significantly changed the configuration of the artistic community of the city, the system of institutions shaping the art scene as well as the artistic goals. It also brought forth new names and inspired new images. These changes were above all determined by political circumstances: the war that broke out in Poland on 1 September 1939; the ceding of Vilnius and the Vilnius region to Lithuania; two Soviet occupations: in the autumn of 1939 and June 1940, and the subsequent Nazi occupation a year later. The influence of politics on the art scene and the life of artists has been explored in institutional and other aspects by both Lithuanian and Polish art historians, but the big picture is not yet complete, and the general narrative is still under construction. A further aim of this paper is to highlight some elements that have not received sufficient attention in historiography and that are necessary for the reconstruction of the whole. Some facts of cooperation or its absence among artists of various ethnicities are presented, and the question is raised on the extent to which these different groups were affected by Sovietisation, and what impact this fragmentation had on the city’s art scene. The timeline of the activity of the higher art school and the Art Museum has been detailed.
 
 

Religious Motifs in Polish Contemporary Art Using the Crucifixion: An Outline of the Problem

Sacred motifs have a long tradition in art and ample figurative representation. They have been present in the visual arts for numerous reasons, from the need to identify faith to artistic expression based on commonly-known truths and stories saturated with meaning. In the art of the twentieth century, Christian motifs were often an excuse to speak about the world, its threats and fears, and the human condition. Polish artists frequently availed themselves of religious symbols and systems in the post-war era, and during the political transforma­tion of the 1980s, they became a way to articulate uncertainty, expectation, and hope for change. Today, the religious trope is a pretext for artistic commentary on religion, social problems, and internal issues of the creators themselves. The article explores the causes and the nature of artistic practice rooted in Christian iconography in Polish contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on the motif of the crucifixion.

Karol Szymanowski and multiculturalism

Karol Szymanowski and multiculturalism

Photography and sculpture:The multifaceted relation of sculpture to photography and new media in the light of the evolving concept of sculpture

The relationship between photography and sculpture, unlike the dialogue between the latter and painting, was long treated as a peripheral issue. Yet as early as the mid-20th century photography began to show potential that sculpture seemed to be lack. Aware of a large degree of overlap between the two forms of artistic expression, (e.g. with respect to materiality, spatiality, or accentuating frozen gestures) sculptors did not leave sculpture for photography, but attempted to create works that were interdisciplinary in structure. The rise of interest in photography displayed by Polish sculptors was closely connected with the evolution of the concept of sculpture. In the mid-20th century artists creating traditional sculptures (understood as a solid or as a visually rendered spatial form) began to experiment and cross the boundaries of well-established artistic tradition. The changes introduced enabled sculptors to interweave their field with other artistic disciplines, especially photography, even more closely. More and more frequently, sculpture started to establish multi-faceted relations with the new medium. At the beginning the potential of photography as a documentation tool was exploited. Then sculptors began to appreciate photography’s core values, using it to capture and preserve a given moment in time. Finally, they applied it in works that can be classified as close to hyperrealism. The employment of still newer materials and tools made the link between sculpture and photography inextricable, as can be shown through works of Polish artists.

Witolda Urbanowicza dwaj Papieże w Paryżu

This article is just a marginal part in discovering Witold Urbanowicz’s works. Discovering it once again, but from a different perspective. Urbanowicz was a Polish artist – painter, sculptor and graphic designer living in Paris. The works of the 75-year old Pallottine are a part of a large contribution of Polish artists creating abroad in the XXth and XXIst century which, over the years, have been vastly underappreciated. This analysis is focused on a large-scale representation (created in 2014 with a fresco technique) of two Popes – Pope John Paul II and John XXIII, heading towards the Upper Room. The main motivation behind creating this piece of art in the Pallottines’ bulding in Paris was the fact that both Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (later to become John XXIII) and Karol Wojtyła visited the place at one point in their lives. The former paid a visit to the bulding in the early 50s of the XXth century while he was still an apostolic nuncio. Meanwhile, the Pole visited the place in 1978, in which he consumed his meals with the nuns at the refectory – the same refectory in which today we can enjoy the work of Urbanowicz. This scene not only represents a significant moment in the Parisian Pallottines’ history, but also brings with itself a number of interpretations that can provoke deep conteplation about the Church’s history.

Jewish Art Collectors in Poland and the Works of Maksymilian Gierymski before World War II

From the end of the nineteenth century and up to the beginning of World War II, many of Maksymilian Gierymski’s (1846-1874) works were part of the collections of respected Jewish collectors, including Maksymilian Adam Oderfeld, Edward Rejcher, Stanisław Rotwand, Adolf Peretz, and Abe Gutnajer. They combined buying Polish art with providing financial support for many Polish cultural institutions. Thanks to these collectors the Polish public had better knowledge of Gierymski’s art. They bought his works at a time when the best examples of his oeuvre were abroad. 1939 was a tragic turning point for their activity. Collections were destroyed or stolen, including Gierymski’s work, and most of these items were not catalogued. Nevertheless, the collectors’ knowledge, passion, and expertise raised the bar for standards in Polish art collecting generally. The forgotten activity of Poland’s Jewish collectors is an essential part of the history of nineteenth-century Polish art.

From Historic Inventory to Contemporary Display: The Collections of the Zachęta — National Gallery of Art in Warsaw

The history of the post-war collection of the Zacheta — National Gallery of Art in Warsawis one of meanders of Polish cultural policy. Today gallery’s function is primarily as a place of exhibition (Kunsthalle). The collection of Polish art that was amassed here prior to the II World War now constitutes a substantial element in the inventories of the National Museum in Warsaw. However, one of the statutory requirements of Zacheta nonetheless remains “the collection, inventory and storage of contemporary works of art”. Zacheta’s current collection numbers 3598 works (Annual Report 2017). The works document a number of important phenomena in Polish art from the late 1940s until today, including different types of geometric abstraction, the metaphorical-expressive movement (a Polish version of surrealist tendencies), the new figurative movement, the Polish Colourist aesthetics, and the most recent tendencies, such as the socalled “critical art” of the 1990–2000s. In 1949 the Central Office for Art Exhibitions was founded and located in the Zacheta building. The collection accumulated during the Central Office for Art Exhibitions period of existence (until 1992) is not one that had a well-defined profile. Works were bought from exhibitions,competitions and sometimes simply as a form of aid to artists. The funds for purchase came from the Ministry of Culture and Art: from the Fund for the Development of the Visual Arts, or through the national ordering system of the Art Department in the Ministry. However, during the 1970s, works began to be acquired for the purposes of exhibitions and education. The most recent acquisitions are primarily of works by Polish contemporary artists exhibited at the gallery and of works co-produced by the Zacheta, whether inhouse or elsewhere (e.g. for the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale). During the 1990–2000s the Zacheta has succeeded in putting together a collection of works by middle generation and young generation of Polish artists (such as, internationally renowned Pawel Athamer, Miroslaw Balka, Katarzyna Kozyra, Zbigniew Libera and Artur Żmijewski). Collection building is a significant part of the gallery’s contemporary policy. This is made possible by funds offered by sponsors (such as the ING Polish Art Foundation), funds obtained through the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage programme Collections — Regional Collections of Contemporary Art, and also funds generated by Zacheta specially for the purpose or donations of works by artists (crowdfunding). Works from the collection are also included in the Zacheta’s exhibition and educational programme. The focus of the paper is on the transition from the Zacheta’s historical inventories to the issues of collection’s contemporary forms of display.

Sztuka i architektura dla II Rzeczypospolitej

Art and architecture for the Second Polish Republic The period of the Second Polish Republic was a time of dynamic processes of unification and modernisation. They were also reflected in art and architecture. This should not come as a surprise given the fact that Polish artists were involved in the struggle for independence on the battlefields, while they also documented Polish military efforts during the World War I. Later on, they held positions in the state administration, especially in the administrative structures responsible for art patronage and education; finally, they were also active in the field of national propaganda. The authorities of the Second Polish Republic appreciated the importance of modern art, especially that the restoration of independence coincided with a debate about the various definitions of the Polish national style. This debate, which involved supporters of vernacular stylisation and those who promoted modernism, found its complex reflection in the Polish General Exhibition in Poznańin 1929. The exhibition confirmed that the leading role in the process of modernisation was assumed by architecture and urban planning.

Dzieje zakupu Czwórki Józefa Chełmońskiego do Muzeum Narodowego w Krakowie

At the beginning of October 1879, as part of the celebrations of Jozef Ignacy Kraszewski’s (1812–1887) jubilee, the painter Henryk Siemiradzki (1843–1902) donated his work Pochodnie Nerona (Nero’s Torches) to the Sukiennice gallery.Many Polish painters soon followed in his footsteps, thus founding the collection of the future National Museum in Cracow. The first director of the Museum (in the years 1883–1900) was Wladyslaw Łuszczkiewicz (1828–1900), one of Cracow’s most illustrious personages at that time, an art historian, painter and teacher. Under his directorship the Museum began to buy pictures by contemporary Polish painters. Based on documents from the Museum archive, the article presents the circumstances of purchasing the painting Czworka (Four-in-hand) by one of the most famous and most valued Polish artists, Jozef Chelmonski (1849–1914). This large-format oil-on-canvas work (275 × 660 cm), showing a four-in hand driven with dash by a Ukrainian peasant (fig. 1), is one of the top achievements of naturalism in Polish art. Painted in Paris in 1881, it was purchased from the artist for 3000 silver roubles in 1899. Ever since then, it has been exhibited in Sukiennice, the oldest historical location of the National Museum, and it is now one of the gems of the Museum’s Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Painting.

Self-Patronage versus State Patronage: Polish and Polish-Jewish Artists React to the Trauma of March ’68

Social tensions in communist Poland were exacerbated with the launching of anti-Zionist propaganda in June 1967. Warsaw students organized numerous protests after the authorities tightened censorship, and later banned the staging of Adam Mickiewicz’s Dziady at the National Theater, considering it to be anti-Soviet. Government forces stifled student protests with numerous arrests, at times causing serious injuries, dismissals from the university, and ultimately the expulsion of Polish citizens of Jewish origin from Poland. The restrictions affected Holocaust survivors who were employed in art schools and cultural institutions. This group included Artur Nacht-Samborski, Jonasz Stern, Eugeniusz Eibisch, and Gizela Szancerowa, among others. Notable artistic testimonies of the experience of March ’68 events and their effects were left by painters and sculptors from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, its students, graduates, and lecturers: Witlod Masznicz, Artur Nacht-Samborski, Krystiana Robb-Narbutt, Ewa Kuryluk, Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz, and others in his studio - Barbara Falender, Henryk Morel, Grzegorz Kowalski, and Krzysztof M. Bednarski. In Cracow, artists belonging to the Wprost (Explicit) group, including Maciej Bieniasz, Zbylut Grzywacz, Leszek Sobocki, and Jacek Waltoś, commented on the events of March ’68 boldly and on an ongoing basis.

The Role of Professor Władysław Semkowicz and the Jagiellonian University in Promoting Polonophilia in Slovakia in the Interwar Period

The interwar relations between Czechoslovakia and Poland were tense for almost twenty years. Problems were caused not only by border disputes. In this situation, the interest of young Slovak intelligence in Polish culture and science began to increase in the early 1920s, which was supported by Warsaw, in its efforts to undermine the position of Prague. A well-known Slovakophile, Professor Władysław Semkowicz played an important role in supporting young Slovaks. His largest impact on Slovak-Polish relations was his patronage of visiting Slovak students at the Jagiellonian University. Semkowicz’s efforts gradually bore fruit. Many of the programme participants promoted Polish literature, art and history after their return home. This Polonophilia was not limited to the cultural sphere but also had an effect on politics. At the end of 1938, the Polish territorial claims against Slovakia severely disappointed the Polonophiles. Nevertheless, there were a number of Slovaks who kept their contacts in Polish cultural circles and continued to have pro-Polish sentiments even after the country’s defeat in September 1939.

Wawelski czarny krucyfiks. Krzyż królowej Jadwigi, Leona Wyczółkowskiego i św. Jana Pawła II

A unique Gothic crucifix has been worshiped in the Wawel Royal Cathedral throughout centuries. The sculpture created in Bohemia or Hungary around 1380 was brought by Jadwiga of Poland (13741399) from Hungary to Poland, most likely in 1384. At the feet of Christ Crucified the monarch prayed for the gift of wisdom to rule the kingdom. The crucifix was placed in an altar in the Wawel Royal Cathedral and it has inspired a great devotion to the Crucified. After premature death of Jadwiga in 1399 the altar became a place of veneration of the monarch, which ever since has been lasting unceasingly. Due to the fact that prayers of the faithful through intercession of the queen at the crucifix were blessed by wonders it acquired great significance and started being called ‘miraculous’. Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, carrying out the function of the Metropolitan of Kraków, evoked the memory of Jadwiga in a particular way, encouraged her veneration and intensifi d efforts towards her canonization. He regarded the Crucifix of Jadwiga as ‘a place of the powerful testimony’. As pope John Paul II he canonized the queen during the Eucharist celebrated in Błonia Park in Krakow on the 8th of June 1997. The crucifix became a symbol of Polish history, spiritual heritage and deep faith of the Polish nation, what has been proved by the strong presence of this motif in fi arts. In the time of partitions of Poland Leon Wyczółkowski (1852-1936), an outstanding Polish artist and a teacher depicted it many times using a range of artistic techniques. A lively interest in a pastel ‘Crucifi of Jadwiga of Poland’ by Wyczółkowski auctioned in Kraków in 2019, which price went from 35 000 PLN (starting price) to 54 000 PLN (hammer price) after emotional bidding reveals how profound is its signifi to the Polish nation nowadays.