Portrait of Pelagia Witosławska

Konrad Krzyżanowski often arrived at quite universal results when producing his modest portraits of relatives. A perfect example is this portrait of Pelagia Witosławska, awarded at the 1913 International Exhibition in Munich. The image of the old paralyzed member of the artist’s family is not only a meticulous record of the woman’s appearance but also a sobering metaphor for the tragedy of human existence. In the hands of the sensitive artist, the act of painting a portrait of a crippled aunt was transformed into an act of immortalising on canvas the terrifying state of a body ravaged by age and illness.

Using his trademark technique of hurried brush strokes producing sweeping streaks of greasy paint, the artist was able to render the details of the subject in but a few precise gestures, attesting to his uncanny virtuosity. Ironically, the merciless portrayal of the ugliness of the illness-stricken body, its frailty, gauntness and paralytic rigidity resulted in a painting that inspires awe with the veracity of its message and its technical artistic beauty. In striving to express the brutal truth, the artist utilised a highly-contrasting chiaroscuro and a subdued colour palette of murky blacks and browns. The composition hinges on the old woman’s head and left hand, extracted from the darkness with an almost blinding brightness. The flaccid, emaciated face is striking for its predatory, caricature-like directness. In the woman’s desperate gaze, in her grimacing mouth and the wrinkled skin of her face we identify the subject’s suffering and dread as well as the artist’s projection of fear and disconcertion. At the same time, the painting taps into the terror of old age, illness and death felt by all of us.