INTRODUCTION

PAINTING
IN POLAND

I N   G A L L E R Y

Scene before a Duel

Old Man and Young Maiden

A Girl

St. Mary's Church
at Night

Four-in-Hand

Teodeor Axentowicz /1859 – 1938/ - “OLD MAN AND YOUNG MAIDEN”,

Pastel on paper, 25” x 19” (63.5 x 49 cm)

An outstanding artist of the “Young Poland” period and painter of historical scenes and the Hucul region in Southeastern Poland, Axentowicz was best known for his portraits. He loved to paint children, young girls and beautiful, elegant ladies bringing out the subtleties of feminine beauty and the special aura of sensuous, sometimes almost erotic appeal. He painted mainly in pastel, using a technique he developed to perfection; next to Wyspiański and Wyczółkowski, he is considered the outstanding Polish painter of the genre.

The thin, multi-hued, often shimmering lines combine into a subtle, illuminated texture from which emerge glimmering, impressionist-like shapes and figures. In his earlier years Axentowicz was sometimes partial to symbolic and philosophical musings about human life. He frequently juxtaposed the figures of an old man and a young girl to convey the inevitable passing of life. In those beautiful paintings, the artist let himself be seen as sensitive to the variability of the human condition.

The man in an oriental headgear, the eternal old man, and the very young girl seem very still, as if stopped short by a bitter truth which the young woman faces for the first time and the old man
knows all too well; her youth and beauty will pass with time.

The motif of old man and young girl appears in Axentowicz’s paintings around 1900 and later, in the 1930s. The drawing technique and the richness of the fabrics point to the earlier period, but the clothes and headband that the girl wears indicate a work of late 1920s.