This letter, written by Antoni Rzasa in 1964 upon his return to Poland after a scholarship stay in Italy, is addressed to Stanislaw Morawski, one of the first persons whose acquaintance Rzasa made during his Italian journey; it was Morawski who met the artist at the airport, took him to an hotel and was the first to show the Eternal City. Antoni Rzasa mentioned an interval in sculpting and 'renting a small house'...
The sketch pertains to the letters of Antoni Rzasa, a Polish sculptor, and his brother, Józef, whose vast correspondence lasted between the mid-1950s and Antony's death at the beginning of 1980. Antoni Rzasa appears to have been an 'extremely human' person - the letters addressed to his sibling do not conceal anything. Hence, they often mention painful and difficult issues, at times probably much too frequently and intensely. The second part of the sketch deals with the journey made by Antoni Rzasa to Italy in the winter of 1962, a key experience in his artistic development. All these factors constitute testimony of the artist's activity; despite the fact that he applied artistic means interpreted as purely folk, Rzasa dealt with all that is universal, regardless of the cultural competences of his recipients. The reason could lie in the fact that the artist strove towards recounting that which is the ultimate truth: he told about man.
The Italian notebook is a small address book with a rather sombre brown cover. The first pages are full of addresses of persons, the names of Italian institutions, vocabulary, useful expressions and hurriedly noted down sites, both those already seen and those to be toured, which Antoni Rzasa recorded during his journey across Italy in the winter of 1962. The following pages contain detailed descriptions and observations concerning people, art and the landscape.
The archive of the correspondence of Antoni and Józef Rzasa totals some 600 letters - the majority is also available in an electronic version (1.5 million characters on paper recorded for almost 25 years). The letters take up two small metal boxes full of already yellowed envelopes. The examples presented below are a modest selection made from the viewpoint of the recollections and consequences of a trip to Italy.
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