Myth, Darkness, Dream

Irrationalism, pessimism and resignation are among the overarching features of early modernism. Literature, painting and sculpture clearly reflect the process of assimilating and intensifying the tradition of catastrophe.

"Abduction" is a fantastic and symbolic composition in a style characteristic of Kazimierz Stabrowski. Mythological creatures straight from a nightmare kidnap a woman, or maybe just a human soul.

The culture of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries indicates a tendency to metaphysical, dreamlike issues assigned to the time of night. It raises issues related to human existence.

Kazimierz Stabrowski's "Soul Complaint" shows a female figure huddled on the church floor. A woman's soul, immersed in prayer, rises to the light emanating from the altar.

Magic, parapsychology, spiritism, as well as experiments with opium as the key to "artificial havens" arouse great interest. Polish artists react to these impulses from within Western cultures in a creative and creative way.

Expressive depiction of naked, stripped of eroticism, nameless figures lost in the eponymous procession. Enriching the whole with decorative elements indicates Wygrzywalski's sense of wall decoration.

Feliks Maria Wygrzywalski was a painter, draftsman and illustrator, talented, prolific and appreciated during his lifetime. He was educated in Vienna and Paris, lived in Rome and Lviv. He designed the scenery for the Lviv City Theater.

Especially in the ghostly visions of Marian Wawrzeniecki, straight from nightmares or the hellish underworld, dominate: dark forest, swamps and thickets, rock chimneys, skull crosses.

Kidnappings and crucifixions, a visit of a personified Death and a grave emptiness intensify the terror.

How far - ask the creators of fin de siècle - are we from this paradise garden? How close - do they spread uncertainty - to the state of nirvana, redemption?

Their works often do not provide an answer. But it is possible that sooner or later light will emerge from the darkness.

Artists, high priests of art led to the light, with the right to express the essence of life, to indicate a specific hierarchy of values. Culture gains a key and indispensable place in it.

The artists take the figures of the old sage, the messenger of the gods of Mercury, John the Baptist.