dimensions: 80x90
author's label: Signed and dated upper right: Wojtkiewicz /1908
description: Witold Wojtkiewicz holds a special place among the painters of Young Poland; his typically decadent fin de siècle painting was described by Tadeusz Boy Żeleński as being “unlike anything else”, while André Gide called it a “personal fusion of Naturalism, Impressionism and grotesque”. The artist created his own, surprisingly expressive painterly world that emerges, as it were, from somnambular visions. Dream images alternating with those from tales are populated by lame dolls, puppets, obnoxious manikins, and ugly and disgusting biddies taking part in strange ceremonies. Meditations is possibly the last artwork by the artist, who died prematurely aged barely 30. It is part of a series of seven paintings, today no longer complete, entitled Ceremonies. Wojtkiewicz put it on view in autumn 1908 at a show reviewing the achievements of Grupa Zero. The other pieces of the series, Death of a Girl (Liberation), The Princess’s Assistants, Summon (Tribute), Idyll (Matchmaking), Phenomenon (Fairy Tale), Christ and Children and Meditations (Ash Wednesdays) did not, however, add up to a coherent whole: each of them was an independent, mysterious and melancholic composition saturated with its own fairy–tale character.
Meditations illustrates a Lenten scene of sprinkling heads with ash at the foot of a Baroque altar. There is a woman wearing elaborately decorated dress in contrasting black and white colours, and an equally attractive two-colour hat garnished with a black ostrich feather. She supports her head with hands in a gesture known from allegoric representations of melancholy. The woman divides the space into two worlds: on her right two figures in fancy white clothes sit on the steps of the altar; on her left there is a grim, sad group in black mourning robes. The dissonance between the joyous and sad parts of the image is achieved not only through the use of colour but also through a clash of moods: the figures’ tranquillity is at odds with their ceremonial dress that appears childish in its tacky exaggeration. The same discord is suggested in the title: Meditations may refer to pondering over the course of human life, or a reflection on the ceremoniousness of Lent.
exposition: The Gallery of 20th Century Polish Art,
The Main Building, 1, 3 Maja Av.