Rafał Malczewski
1892 - 1965

During the years of the World War I, Rafał Malczewski studied philosophy, architecture and astronomy in Vienna. He was a self-taught painter based on his observation of the working methods of his father, Jacek Malczewski, one of the most prominent Polish modernist painters. Infatuated with the Tatra Mountains and the culture of the Polish highlanders in the Podhale region, Rafał was a keen mountaineer. In 1917 he settled in Zakopane, where he acted as one of chief contributors to the artistic life of the area, devoting articles and books to the subject. He was a close friend of Witkacy (Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz). He lived in Zakopane until World War II. He was a member of the Society of Polish Podhale Art and "Rytm" Association (from 1929 on). In 1930 he traveled to France. When World War II started, he left Poland with his wife Zofia, going again to France via Slovakia and Hungary. As early as 1940 he went to Portugal and from there to Brazil. Then he moved to New York City, and from there, in 1942, to Canada, where he spent the rest of his life. Wiktor Podoski, a Polish minister in Canada, proved very helpful to the artist: he co-organized his exhibitions and popularized his art among the elite society of the country. Openings of his exhibitions were sponsored by eminent personalities and attended by the aristocracy and diplomatic circles. Podoski also arranged for Canadian Railways to commission a series of mountain views from Rafał. This company later used the paintings as tourist advertisements.

Rafał lived in Montreal, but he traveled extensively for the exhibitions of his works, as well as in search for landscape motifs (e.g. in the Rocky and St. Lawrence Mountains). The popularity of his art suffered a decline after the end of the war, and health problems forced him to concentrate on writing memoirs rather than painting. He resurrected an old passion begun before the war, when he had published numerous essays, columns and poems about the Tatra Mountains, sports, and art. He traveled to the U.S. few times. In 1957 he became partly paralyzed, so, at the age of 64, learned how to paint with his right hand, having previously being left-handed. In 1959 he visited Poland, seeing his pre-war paintings in the National Museum in Warsaw.

He won several prizes and awards, of which the most prestigious were a gold medal at the International Exhibition of Art and Technology in Paris (1937), a small silver medal at the General Nationwide Exhibition in Poznań (1929), the prize of the Fund of National Culture (1937) and an artistic award from Kultura of Paris (1962).

Rafał Malczewski occupied himself mainly with landscape painting. This inhabitant of Zakopane of his own choice, and of Canada as a result of emigration, was attracted by mountain landscapes most of all. His other landscapes featured views of small towns and their fringes, as well as industrial views of Silesia and the Central Industrial District. He also immortalized exotic scenes from Brazil and cityscapes of New York. His studies of Brazilian flowers and retrospective War-views from Poland have also been preserved.

His work is characterized by a consciously primitivizing stylization of observed reality, based on a decorative cubification of forms. The register of moods in his oil paintings and watercolors runs from the serene, poetic, slightly fairytale-like to the disturbing mystery of the "reversed reality" of empty spaces (especially in town and industrial views). This approach situates the artist's oeuvre within the circle of magic realism in a broad sense. Consequently, his painting was compared with compositions by artists belonging to the German New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) such as Franz Radziwill, Walter Spies, or Alexander Kanoldt.

The pure, saturated hues of his paintings from the 1920s that operated on the principle of clear contrasts were replaced during the next decade with more refined coloring, while the facture, which had had an almost academic, smooth finish, acquired more distinct textural effects. He has at times been reproached for technical shortcomings, but this attitude was influenced, above all, by unreasonable comparisons with his father's works. Rafał was, in fact, a genuine talent.

Rafał Malczewski had a number of one-man shows: in Warsaw (1924, 1928, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1938); Zakopane (1926, 1936); Kraków (1929, 1930); Poznań (1934), Łódź (1935) and Katowice (1935). Across the Atlantic his one-man shows took place mainly in Canada, in Montreal (1943, 1945, 1949, 1952); Ottawa (1943, 1944); Vancouver (1943), Toronto, Winnipeg, Halifax, Hamilton, Sidney and Windsor. He exhibited in the U.S. in Cincinnati (1943) and Washington, D.C. (1944).

In Poland the artist participated in numerous group exhibitions, including those in Warsaw (from 1930 on), Zakopane, Łódź, Kraków and Poznań (Nationwide Exhibition 1929). He took part as well in many exhibitions of Polish art abroad: Paris (1928, 1937); Brussels and the Hague (both in 1929); the Venice Biennale (1932); Los Angeles (1932); New York (1933, 1939); Pittsburgh (1937, 1938); Detroit (1945), Ottawa (1942) and Montreal (1954). He participated in Canadian artistic life, showing his works together with those of A.Y. Jackson, a member of the Group of Seven, one of the most important Canadian artistic groups.

-- Artur Tanikowski

Works in the collection: