Eugeniusz Geppert
1890 - 1979

Eugeniusz Geppert began to study painting in 1908 at the Leonard Stroynowski School in Kraków while enrolled as a law student at the Jagiellonian University. He graduated in 1912, and entered the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts, training under Jacek Malczewski and Stanisław Dębicki until 1920. The years of World War I marked a break in his education: the painter was exiled to Orenburg in the Ural Mountains and later fought with the Polish Eastern Corps in Russia. He spent the period 1925-1927 in Paris on a scholarship from ZPAP (Association of Polish Artists). Upon his return to Poland, he stayed in Warsaw and Kraków where he finally settled, co-operating with the periodicals Głos Plastyków and Czas. There, he joined the association “Zwornik” (Keystone) as he had exhibited earlier with "Nowa Generacja" (the New Generation) in Lvov. Prior to World War II he traveled to France, Germany, Belgium and Italy. After spending the war years in Kraków, like many other Lvovians, he moved to Wrocław, where he became one of the main contributors to Polish artistic life. He organized a branch of ZPAP there and an art school (PWSSP), where he taught until 1961 and served as the rector until 1950, when the government decreed social realism as the "official artistic doctrine." At the beginning of the 1960s he co-founded the group “School of Wrocław” (later called the Wrocław Group). In 1957 he again visited Paris, which had immense influence on the last stage of his oeuvre.

Silhouettes of horses, mounted riders in landscapes, galloping horses and battle cavalcades recur throughout his oeuvre. For Geppert, the horse was an object of continuous study at various moments of his career and not merely a symbol pulled out of the closet of possible images. He creatively reached back to the nineteenth-century tradition of Piotr Michałowski's romantic painting. In some cases it was only a distant inspiration, in others a transposition of definite compositional details, and in still others it was, in the words of Mariusz Hermansdorfer: "a direct recourse to the artistic concepts of the author of Somosierra." Initially, his form was sculptural, rhythmical, and classicizing in a modern way cultivated by members of the Associ-ation of Polish Artists "Rytm". Over time, due to contact with works by masters of European painting in Parisian museums and those of the impressionists, the evolution of Geppert's painting evolved towards colorism. In a manner similar to that of the Kapists, he benefited from the achievements of the postimpressionists. Historical-national inspirations gave way to a fascination with folk art. The artist participated in official exhibitions, wherein he made use his of his experiences to depict historic battles of the Polish armed forces. Geppert's colorism manners did not gain him recognition among opponents of social realism. He also did not refrain from making portraits of "leading workers" as dictated by the regime. His stay in Paris gave him a continuing impulse to refresh his artistic ideas, not in an avant-garde manner but in agreement with his previous interests. His encounter with works by Raoul Dufy and Paul Cézanne proved especially seminal. In the final period of his creative output, the earlier experiences amalgamated into a particular synthesis of form, in which his brushwork was reduced to wide vertical and horizontal paint strokes.

His debut took place while he was exiled in Russia, at Gallery Lemercier in Moscow. He then exhibited in Kraków, Warsaw and Lvov, as well as Los Angeles (1932, Art Olympics), Paris (Autumn Salons 1925, 1927, 1928) and Pittsburgh (International Art Exhibition 1938). His one-man shows took place at the Parisian galleries "Au Sacre de Printemps" and Carmine (1926-1927), the Garliński Salon in Warsaw (1929, 1930) and Zachęta (1957, 1978), TPSP in Kraków (1946, posthumous exhibition in 1984) and the National Museum in Wrocław. He wrote the books Formalne i nieformalne zagadnienia w malarstwie polskim (The Formal and Informal Aspects of Polish Painting, 1947); Moja droga (My Path, Kraków 1968) and Przeszłość daleka i bliska (The Past from Near and Far, Wrocław 1977; expanded edition of preceding book).

-- Artur Tanikowski

Works in the collection: