Austriackie cmentarze I wojny światowej w Galicji autorstwa Jana Szczepkowskiego

• Autorzy: Chrudzimska-Uhera K.

Warianty tytułu

EN

Designs by Jan Szczepkowski of Austrian World War I cemeteries in Galicia

• Języki publikacji: PL

Abstrakty

EN

The sculptor Jan Szczepkowski (1878-1964) is known as an outstanding representative of Polish Art Deco, the author of the Nativity Shrine awarded in 1925 at Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, an outstanding pedagogue, and a jury member at prestigious sculpture competitions. His biography, however, contains a certain gap, and the fate of the artist during the first world war remained shrouded in mystery. His activity at the Kriegsgraberabteilung and projects devised at that time are known only to a limited group of researchers interested in Galician war cemeteries. The reason for this silence can be explained by the animosity which accompanied the construction of the cemeteries, a feeling harboured especially among members of the "Polish Applied Arts" Society to which Jan Szczepkowski belonged. Only Tadeusz Szydłowski, the conservator of Western Galicia, perceived the uniqueness of the projects proposed by Szczepkowski which he regarded as simple and unaffected, inspired by the beauty of Nature, and exceptional among other Austrian investments. Years later, while writing about his Polish Shrine, Szczepkowski admitted: "I have had enough of sepulchral sculpture.(...) It is time for joyful sculpture. My dream and wish, still unfulfilled, is sculpture whose forms will enclose sunshine". Source material for research into wartime cemeteries in Western Galicia is composed of documents of the Military Office of Care for War Graves in the District of the Sixth Corps in Cracow 1914/1918-1922/1939, call no. GW, part of the collections of the second department of the State Archive in Cracow. Material preserved in the State Archive in Cracow and private collections makes it possible to ascertain that Szczepkowski's projects were realised (sometimes altered) in the following necropolises: Biesna, Bobowa, Bogoniowice, Ciężkowice, Łużna, Ostrusza, Rzepiennik Marciszewski, Siedliska, Staszkówka, Tursk-Łosie, Lubinka and Łużna-Pustki. Another group was composed of unrealised projects intended for cemeteries in Rakutowa, Rożnowice, Tursk-Zapotocz and Zborowice. The majority of the cemeteries associated with Jan Szczepkowski represents typical solutions, frequently repeated in numerous necropolises devised by the Kriegsgraberabteilung Krakau. The forms of those premises correspond to the directives of the Austrian authorities, and their style is closest to realisations described by P. Pencakowski as a twentieth-century Viennese edition of Classicism. The joint characteristic feature was a striving towards monumentalism both as regards the plan and applied art forms. Only a few of the realised premises veered from this scheme; this holds true, first and foremost, for the cemetery in Bogoniowice. Working as an art director of the Fourth Cemetery District the artist attempted to realise certain aesthetic premises which he had acquired in Cracow, including elements of the so-called native style an early edition of the "national style". Literature on the subject describes J. Szczepkowski's oeuvre as Old - or proto-Slavonic, compares it to that of Dusan Jurkovic, and contrasts it with the monumental and highly emotional projects conceived by the Kriegsgraberabteilung. All the projects by J. Szczepkowski, both realised and unrealised, possess the unquestionable quality of picturesqueness. The most original of the realised projects is indubitably the cemetery in Łużna on Hill of Emptiness. The diversity of the projects left behind by the artist demonstrates convincingly that he was distant from applying a single stylistic modus, and that he treated work in the Galician cemeteries as a field for experiments and experiences. This was the first time in his artistic career that he broached architectural projects on such a large scale. The next occasion took place during the 1940s, when Jan Szczepkowski planned the postwar reconstruction of Warsaw.

Słowa kluczowe

PL

Szczepkowski Jan; rzeźba; cmentarz wojenny; Galicja

EN

Szczepkowski Jan; sculpture; war cemetery; Galicia

• Wydawca: Komitet Architektury i Urbanistyki PAN ; Politechnika Warszawska, Wydział Architektury
• Czasopismo: Kwartalnik Architektury i Urbanistyki
• Rocznik: 2001
• Tom: T. 46, z. 3
• Strony: 239--251
• Opis fizyczny: rys.

Twórcy

autor

Chrudzimska-Uhera K.