Head I

Tytus Czyżewski belonged to the Polish Expressionists group from 1917 (Formists from 1919). He participated in all Formists' exhibitions in Kraków, Warsaw, Lviv, and Poznań. Głowa I [The Head I] comes from this period (around 1920), when Czyżewski analysed formal issues intensely, which was reflected in his works. It was a theme taken up also in other works of the artist from that time, including the painting Głowa / Kompozycja form [The Head / Composition of Forms] from 1920, which is now in the collection of the Museum of Art in Łódź. A gouache from the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin, purchased in 1982, is a bust of a man facing left. The drawing is dominated by black crayons, with white lights on its background. The painter has tried to show multiple perspectives in one portrait. The face is deformed by incorporating geometric figures and intersecting planes; in this way, the artist attempts to show the inexhaustible possibilities of form. This way of searching for a new way of representing reality is connected with the basic principle of the Formists, who established the absolute primacy of form over content. In his Tytus Czyżewski a kryzys formizmu [Tytus Czyżewski and the Crisis of Formism], published a year after the creation of the work, Leon Chwistek stressed that the work needed to be independent of the prevailing reality, spontaneously creating a reality of its own, the one that as such irresistibly imposes itself on the artist.

Beata Małgorzata Wolska