Formist composition

Andrzej Pronaszko, together with his brother Zbigniew Pronaszko and Tytus Czyżewski, went down in the history of art as a bard of modern art who acted against the coryphaeus of Young Poland painting, who gathered around the Society of Polish Artists Sztuka (Art) (active since 1897). They created the Independent exhibitions in Kraków in 1911, 1912 and 1913, modelled on the Parisian Salon des Indépendants. Andrzej Pronaszko studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow between 1909 and 1910 under Leon Wyczółkowski and Stanisław Dębicki. He did not finish his education at this point, developing his skills in Munich and Paris. In the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin, there is a painting entitled Kompozycja formistyczna [The Formist Composition] from around 1920, i.e. from the period of Andrzej Pronaszko's work, which is sometimes referred to as Formist. It was when his artistic search referred to Cubist aesthetics. When independence was regained, he was close to looking for a new form to express the national element. The canvas we are interested in here is a geometric composition dominated by red and its shades, contrasted with white and shades of beige. Some of the elements forming the representation are surrounded by a thick contour. The geometric shapes form a synthetic still life. They are not representations of reality but interpretations of objects. Under modern thought, a work of art does not serve reality, and it is not supposed to preserve it; it is supposed to be an autonomous whole resulting from the artist's imagination. In the Szczecin composition, one can also find influences of folk glass painting. At the same time, it is an arrangement in which interest in the possibilities of capturing movement in geometric representations is visible since individual elements create the feeling of movement about one another.

Beata Małgorzata Wolska