Tadeusz Pruszkowski’s villa in Kazimierz Dolny is the most characteristic example of modernism in the entire area. It was built in 1938 on the slope of Three Crosses Mountain, designed by Lech Niemojewski, to become the artist’s home and studio and a meeting place for his students and friends. Pruszkowski himself was one of the artists who discovered Kazimierz for the artistic community, making it an important centre of Polish culture in the interwar period.
Tadeusz Pruszkowski’s Villa in Kazimierz Dolny
A professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Tadeusz Pruszkowski significantly contributed to the development of Kazimierz Dolny as an artistic centre in the interwar period. In 1938, he erected a modernist villa there designed by Lech Niemojewski, a professor at the Warsaw University of Technology. The building, once known as ‘Kasztel Prusza’, was controversial among residents and conservationists, who feared that the modern form would disturb the historic landscape of the town. The house stood on the slope of the Three Crosses Hill, in a place visible from the Vistula valley. The tall block, built from local limestone with arcades on the river side, resembles a fortified bastion. It was planned on a near-square plan and has an irregular interior with a large, two-storey studio. The villa was the space in which large canvases depicting the most important moments in Polish history were created, including works presented in 1939 at the World Exhibition in New York.
After the war, the building became the subject of disputes over its aesthetic value. Karol Siciński, the government’s plenipotentiary for the reconstruction of Kazimierz, removed the villa from documentary photographs of the town, while Stanisław Lorentz believed that it should be purchased and demolished. Despite these opinions, the villa survived and in 1966 was entered in the register of monuments of the Lublin Province. Today, it is considered a very important element of Kazimierz’s cultural landscape, listed alongside the parish church, the tower and the castle ruins.
Tadeusz Pruszkowski – biography
Tadeusz Pruszkowski was born in 1888. He was a painter, art critic and one of the most prominent pedagogues of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. In 1923, he came to Kazimierz Dolny for the first time with his students for an open-air painting workshop. The charm of the town made him return there in the following years, and the holiday trips turned into a tradition of artistic meetings. A creative community was born in Kazimierz, which later formed the Brotherhood of St. Luke, known for its attention to technique and historical subject matter.
Pruszkowski knew how to inspire and encourage independent exploration. His students remembered him as a warm and open person. After a day’s work in the open air, he would invite them to his house, where they would talk about art and life by the fire. The villa on the hillside became a meeting place for artists and a symbol of the community that was established in Kazimierz in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1925, Pruszkowski, together with Father Stanisław Szepietowski, founded the Society of Friends of Kazimierz Dolny, which took care of the protection of historical monuments and the development of the town. Two years later, he made a film entitled “Szczęśliwy wisielec, czyli Kalifornia w Polsce” (Happy Hanging, or California in Poland), in which his students played the leading roles and the extras were the townspeople.
Pruszkowski’s villa in 1938 and today. Source: WBP Digital Library in Lublin and Pankrzysztoff, CC BY-SA 3.0 PL, via Wikimedia Commons
Tadeusz Pruszkowski’s villa – heritage and memory
Tadeusz Pruszkowski died in 1942, shot by the Germans while trying to escape from a prisoner transport. In 1938 he became an honorary citizen of Kazimierz Dolny, and in 1963 a commemorative plaque was unveiled in his villa. The building still serves as a reminder of an artistic chapter in the town’s history and of a man who discovered Kazimierz for a wide range of artists.
Source: zabytek.pl, Lublin Voivodeship Historic Preservation Officer
Read also: Architecture | Modernism | Monument | Villas and residences | Architecture in Poland
