Józefa Chełmońskiego „Droga” ku abstrakcji

Upon his return to Warsaw from Paris, Józef Chełmoński submitted for the 1888 exhibition of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (TZSP) five paintings that substantially differed from his earlier painterly manner. The TZSP committee, however, rejected them all, except for the most conventional one. Chełmoński displayed the rejected works with some other pieces at Aleksander Krywult’s Salon. The four canvases not admitted by the Society were landscapes, two of which had no staffage, a feature rarely encountered in Polish painting. Even many years later, critics referred to them as ‘almost abstract’ works. In the years to follow, Chełmoński painted landscapes, but also genre scenes. It can be clearly seen that the artist was interested in the painting’s flatness, hence his decision to avoid any narration, since the 3-D quality of the presentation is achieved by relating it to story-telling. It was still too soon for flatness of the presentation in Chełmoński’s oeuvre, however the search he undertook in the latter half of the 1880s heading in this very direction makes the artist rank among Modernists.