The Eastern square (Tunis)

Most symbolists looked to the East for inspiration and K. Stabrowski was no exception. In 1893, the painter was looking for material for his thesis entitled Muhammad in the Desert and was thus travelling through the historical regions of the Middle East, which, some may say, include the Greater Maghreb countries such as Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Many of K. Stabrowski’s paintings depicting marketplaces are chock-full of the spirit of the Middle East. A pastel of vivid and rather positive colours were used to create abstract and faceless figures of merchants and customers among middle-eastern architecture. Some of the figures are vague, as if they are somewhat transparent. This accentuates the transience and temporal elements of the material and bodily state of being. The faded curves outlining the colourful visible reality encourage the viewer to glance at the eternal spiritual state of being that is present behind it.