Andrzej Pronaszko (1888 Derebczyn - 1961 Warsaw), Landscape

oil, canvas, 70 × 50 cm
Signed p. d.: "And.Pron."

Andrzej Pronaszko, although largely distinguished as a theater stage designer, was also the author of a number of avant-garde paintings. His paintings carried out the programmatic assumptions of the Formists, but the artist did not deny the role played by the study of nature. As he himself admitted: "(...) while searching for new plastic formulations, I never radically cut myself off from communication with nature. I constantly observed it and often painted "directly from nature". Almost every year I went on landscape trips to France or Italy" (quoted by A. Wierzbicka, Andrzej Pronaszko known scenographer and forgotten painter, "Biuletyn Historii Sztuki" 1994, R. LVI, No. 1-2, p. 107). The aftermath of these trips were paintings created in 1927-1935, depicting a landscape subjected to formal stylization. In 1929-1930, the artist presented his works twice at the Salon of Czeslaw Garlinski in Warsaw. The watercolors exhibited at the time have not survived, but were similar in character to the oil offered at the auction: "Rising houses with red roofs and narrow windows at different levels, palm trees, spherical coastal pines, sometimes in the distance a dark blue patch of sea or green triangles of mountains are for him only certain linear and color elements from which he builds his painting compositions. Pronaszko does not want to depict certain specific localities of southern France: he wants to create arrangements of lines and spots of color, the value of which rests in themselves. His compositions (orangish, green, blue-green, lilac gives them a certain characteristic, pleasant, warm color tone) are only vaguely inspired by the landscape and architecture of the south..." (M. Wallis, Paintings by Andrzej Pronaszko - carpets by Wanda Neumanowa (Czeslaw Garlinski Art Salon, Mazowiecka 8), "Robotnik" 1930, no. 324, p. 3). The painting offered at auction comes from the artist's mature period. The backdrop-composed landscape betrays Andrzej Pronaszko's scenographic thinking, while the choice of colors reveals the excellent colorist that he was.