A work by Maurice Gottlieb was considered lost for nearly a century. The artist’s canvas will soon find a new owner. It will be put up for auction as part of the Early Art session at DESA Unicum in Warsaw. The unique paintings can be seen until 17 December. Among those on display are works by Jacek Malczewski, Józef Chełmoński or Mela Muter.
Early art has been experiencing a real ‘renaissance’ in recent months. This is all due to the Olympic Games opening ceremony, as well as the electrifying Polish fans of Lady Gaga’s latest album cover, which features Jan Matejko’s “Stańczyk”. The painting has also entered pop culture thanks to a loan of the work to the Louvre in Paris, where it is on display during the temporary exhibition ‘Figures du fou’ focusing on representations of the figure of the madman, which the singer recorded a music video on the occasion of the premiere of the film ‘Joker’.
The artists’ encrypted symbols, precisely rendered details and the possibility of discovering surprisingly current themes, make Early Art readily interpreted by successive generations of artists and viewers. In December, DESA Unicum has prepared as many as two expositions of 19th century paintings presenting over 100 works by the most important Polish artists of the period. Until 17 December at ul. Piękna 1A, we can see two exhibitions featuring works by artists such as Maurycy Gottlieb, Jacek Malczewski, Józef Chełmoński and Mela Muter.
Transformation under Matejko’s wing
The works of Maurycy Gottlieb are a rarity. The artist lived for only 23 years – his small legacy was dispersed and many works were destroyed during World War II. The painting on display at DESA Unicum, ‘Knights of the Sword of Livonia asking King Sigismund Augustus to protect them from the oppression of Emperor Fernando’, is the work of a mere 18-year-old painter. The canvas was considered lost for almost nine decades and, like the ‘Self-Portrait in the Attire of a Polish Nobleman’, presented in 2019, is among the works mentioned in all major publications on the artist.
The painting was created a year after Gottlieb’s watershed moment. In 1873, during a visit to the Universal Exhibition in Vienna, where he was educated, he came across the work of Jan Matejko. The impulse of the master’s historical paintings was to persuade the young artist to travel to Krakow. It was in Matejko’s studio at the School of Fine Arts that the work depicting the homage of the Livonian knights was created. His pupil transferred the solution used in the painting Batory at Pskov here. The two works are furthermore separated by a small time gap. In his work, Gottlieb wanted to level national conflicts using the universal language of art.
The culmination of the Malczewski year
Encrypted patriotic motifs are also close to one of the most important Polish artists of the 19th century, Jacek Malczewski. The year that is coming to an end has been declared in his name. Over the past few months, many museums and galleries across Poland have held events and exhibitions dedicated to his work. On the occasion of the 170th anniversary of the painter’s birth and 95th anniversary of his death, DESA Unicum is also currently presenting as many as seven works by the artist. The oeuvre of the leading representative of Young Poland concentrated on several important themes, taken up in thematic series. One of them is the motif of Ellenai, the tragic heroine of Juliusz Słowacki’s poem Anhelli, a young Polish woman exiled to Siberia for taking part in the uprising. Her character is an allegory of national suffering and longing for freedom. At DESA Unicum we can find two canvases titled with her name. Discerning observers, on the other hand, will discover Maria Balowa, the painter’s beloved and his muse, who was 25 years his junior, under the figure of Ellenai.
Malczewski also became famous as a prolific artist of self-portraits. One of them, ‘Self-Portrait with Skull’ from 1908, sold in October for 4.2 million and set a record for a painting depicting the artist’s likeness. Now DESA Unicum is presenting ‘Self-Portrait with Ezekiel’, dating from 1914. In his work, Malczewski repeatedly referred to patriotic and independence themes, using symbolic language and complex allegories. He is supposed to have said to his students ‘paint so that Poland will rise from the dead’. On the eve of the Great War, his paintings feature the theme of the biblical prophet Ezekiel, in whose vision the god tells him to speak to skeletons. The use of this story is a symbolic reference to the fate of the Republic. Another curiosity in the exhibition is the portrait of Witold Hausner, signed only with the name ‘Jacek’, which suggests a close relationship between the painter and the portrayed.
Exhibition at DESA Unicum
The ongoing, much-buzzed-about monographic exhibition of works by Józef Chełmoński at the National Museum in Warsaw is yet another indication of the interest in Early Art. DESA Unicum is currently presenting a large-format painting, Return from the Meadows, by the meticulous chronicler of the Polish countryside. The image of a peasant woman against a sky illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun can be interpreted in the spirit of symbolism as approaching the end of life and coming closer to the Absolute emanating from the landscape.
At 1A Piękna Street, you will also find 4 works by one of the most important artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Maria Melania Mutermilch. The ‘Portrait of a man with a dog’ on display is part of a broad group of portraits by the window that appeared in the artist’s work from the very beginning of her artistic career. The silhouette of a sleeping dog is also an element that runs through the artist’s oeuvre. “Saint-Severin Church in Paris”, on the other hand, belongs to the informal series “Old Paris”, created in the 1920s and 1930s, in which the artist depicted the city’s backstreets and monuments.
In addition to depictions of events and landscapes, the exhibition also included still lifes, including Józef Pankiewicz’s work Tulips, described by Antoni Potocki, among others, with the words: “Tulips are fiery, swirling, like flames, huddling, like goblets, exploding. Anemones absorb or radiate a mysterious moisture, they look, they bewitch’.
These and many more of the 142 works will be on view until 17 December during two free exhibitions of Early Art at DESA Unicum at 1A Piękna Street.
source: DESA Unicum
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