Paradise

Jan Wydra was born on 13 June 1902 in Ciecierzyn near Lublin. In 1920, he voluntarily joined the Polish Army and took part in the Polish-Soviet War. He lived in poverty, this is how Jan Wydra's friend, Józef Czechowicz, remembered him: "A hungry and barefoot boy, running through the old streets of the city, he was keen on drawing even then. When there was no sheet of paper at hand, he would draw on the wall of the room horse images of kings he had heard about at school, heads of people from his surroundings, and his mother would destroy these first works every time the room was whitewashed. [...] The acquaintance with a group of his peers, from whom today's poets of the Lublin group grew with time, broadened the young man's horizons".

Jan Wydra's drawing, entitled Raj [Paradise], depicts Adam and Eve. The woman has her back turned to the viewer and is carrying a basket on her head. In front of her, Adam is sitting hunched over on the grass. A tree on the left indicates that the scene takes place in the Garden of Eden. A single fruit is lying next to Adam's feet, we can only guess that Eve is carrying a whole basket of them, the contents are not visible.

The scene, though alluding to Genesis, is not a typical temptation scene, there is no serpent, one can speculate whether it takes place still in the Garden of Eden or just before the temptation so often depicted in art. The biblical story is shown in an expressive way - Eve goes to meet Adam. It is an iconographically interesting representation. Adam's pose expresses a certain passivity, perhaps even fear, while Eve is in motion. They are not shown on an equal level, they do not stand next to the same tree, as it can be observed in old iconography, we have here dynamics and static, oppositions. The compositional position of Eve in the foreground makes her the more important figure, playing the main role, and Adam focuses on her.

The drawing was made with a simple, synthetic line, it is economical in form, it does not capture the richness of the content. The naturalness and lack of rigid composition make the scene closer.

Klara Sadkowska