Krytyk – przyjaciel twórcy i odbiorcy

Krytyka artystyczna Neli Samotyhowej na łamach tygodnika „Kobieta Współczesna” (1927–1934)

Abstract

PIOTR KULAK (The Eryk Lipiński Museum of Caricature) / The critic – friend
of the creator and of the viewer. Nela Samotyhowa’s art criticism in the
weekly magazine “Kobieta Współczesna” (1927–1934)
The article is devoted to Nela Samotyhowa’s critical activity in the periodical
“Kobieta Wspolczesna” (Contemporary Woman) issued in the 1920s and 1930s.
The aim of the paper is to recall this important – for Polish art history – figure,
to indicate the specific nature of her critical texts and to complement the studies
that have been written so far on her activities. Samotyhowa wrote a large number
of exhibition reviews and it is these texts that constitute the main subject of the
analyses presented here. It was the reading of these reviews – supplemented
by her other texts in the pages of “Kobieta Wspolczesna” and the studies on her
published to date – that made it possible to identify the characteristics of the
type of criticism practised by Samotyhowa. The way she wrote about art and
the exhibitions she viewed resulted from her conception of the role of the critic as
a kind of intermediary between the artist and the viewer. Alongside the discussion
and characterisation of Samotyhowa’s critical activity itself, the text also takes
a closer look at her views on the importance of art criticism in the process of art
reception in the 1920s and 1930s.