Grafika malarza? Poszukiwania Wacława Wąsowicza (1891 -1942) w grafice warsztatowej

Abstract

Graphics by a Painter? Wacław Wąsowicz's Endeavours in Printmaking 

Wacław Wąsowicz was a Formist and a member of Ryt and Rytm art groups, who never ceased to search for new modes of expression, executing his artistic concepts in various creative techniques. He practiced painting (apart from oil paintings, gouaches and watercolours, he painted on silk and porcelain) as well as graphic arts. Within this realm, the artist, whose oeuvre closely mirrors to the interwar period, went from the Formist woodcuts via classicistic lithographs and woodcuts depicting idyllic motifs, characteristic of Rytm group, to drypoints, which reflected his fascination with Tadeusz Makowski's and Marcel Gromaire's graphic arts of the 1930s, and further, to his late woodcuts, in which he employed unique vibrating and shimmering texture. These short, creatively diverse phases of interest that helped Wąsowicz to develop as a graphic artist were invariably accompanied by colour, manifested most distinctly in his multi-hued lithographs, while in his woodcut prints were hand-painted with watercolours. Although Wąsowicz tried to use the relief printing, intaglio as well as lithography, he was particularly keen on engraving; as a member of the Formist group, he authored developmentally intriguing Woodcut Portfolio. Wąsowicz is typically defined as a painter who also at times engaged himself in graphic arts. Ali the same, a query arises whether as a graphic designer he remained for the Polish avant-garde, as depicted within the panorama of the interwar period, of lesser significance than as a painter. This article constitutes an attempt to answer the question whether Wąsowicz's graphic works were so much dependent on the phases of his endeavours in painting that the latter mode of his artistic expression ought to be given the primacy over his graphic art works, and his undertakings in this realm classified as the works of a printmakerpainter.