Wladyslaw Malecki

“Village near Kielce ” (Polish: Wieś pod Kielcami ), 1870, oil on canvas, holdings: National Museum Kielce. The view of the village of Białogon (now part of Kielce) is part of a series of images from the area around Kielce at that time

“View of the Wawel ”, (Polish: Widok na Wawel ), 1873, oil on canvas, inventory: National Museum Warsaw. The panorama view of the Wawel Castle was taken during a stay in Krakow

Władysław Aleksander Malecki (born January 3, 1836 in Masłów Pierwszy , † March 5, 1900 in Szydłowiec ) was a Polish landscape painter of realism .

Life

Malecki was the second of three sons of the poor and poor married couple Ignacy and Karolina, née. Chmielewska. Ignacy Malecki worked for a government agency as a clerk and later as a cashier for a mining company in Suchedniow . The son Władysław initially worked as a stage decorator for Antonio Sacchetti in Warsaw . From 1852 to 1856 he then studied painting at the local Academy of Fine Arts under Christian Breslauer .

He then received a state scholarship and was able to continue his studies abroad. In 1865 he was at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna and from 1867 to 1868 with Eduard Schleich at the Munich Art Academy . After completing his studies, he stayed in Munich until 1879; From here he made several trips through Bavaria, Poland and Tyrol. Exhibitions of his pictures in Poland were hardly successful, but abroad he received several awards: a gold medal in 1879 for the “Storchensejm”, a silver medal in London in 1877 for the landscape painting “In the Bavarian Mountains” and bronze medals in London in 1872 and 1874, as well 1873 in Vienna.

In 1880 he returned to Poland. He could not get the job he had hoped for as a decorative painter and laboriously earned his living as a drawing teacher for children.

Malecki's work contains many paintings from the countryside and villages in the Heiligkreuzgebirge . He lived for a long time in Szydłowiec, whose mayor supported him and let him live and work in the town hall tower until his death. There were many pictures of the small town, of urban events and local personalities. Despite his initial success at foreign exhibitions, Malecki's work was not recognized by artist colleagues, critics or collectors in Poland throughout his life. So he lived in very humble circumstances and died impoverished and forgotten. It was not until many years after his death that his work received attention; his importance as one of the fathers of realistic Polish landscape painting was recognized. Today some of his works are in the national museums in Warsaw , Cracow , Poznan , Szczecin and Kielce. The often small-format pictures in oil and watercolor are characterized by a concentration on the painterly and less on the content. Initially influenced by Munich painting, the French painting style after Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and the Barbizon School later gained more importance in Malecki's works.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ according to Halina Stępień, Artyści polscy w środowisku monachijskim w latach 1856–1914 , Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk (ed.), 2003, p. 123 (accessed on September 7, 2012, in Polish)
2. ↑ according to Juliusz Starzyński, Five Centuries of Polish Painting , Publisher: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1953

literature

• Jens Christian Jensen (Ed.), Polish Painting from 1830 to 1914, catalog for the exhibition from June 24 to August 20, 1978 in the Kunsthalle zu Kiel , DuMont, Cologne 1978, p. 228 ff.

Web links

Commons : Władysław Malecki  - collection of images, videos and audio files