Dimensions: 61 x 39 x 38 cm
Signed at the base: 'W Szymanowski'
inv. no. Rz.D.15 MNW
Literature
Szymanowski created the sculpture "Motherhood" when he lived in Paris. At the time, he was strongly influenced by French art, especially the works of Auguste Rodin. The expression of gesture combined with Art Nouveau, flexible lines are characteristic of his work from this period. The work was shown as early as 1901 at the grand exhibition of the Secession in Vienna, and a year later at the Paris Salon; the artist then received an honorable mention for it.
The sculpture, which depicts a mother and child joined in a tender kissing gesture, is a fragment of a larger composition. The entire composition, cast in bronze from a plaster version, was set up in Warsaw's Romuald Traugutt Park in May 1929 and was purchased by the authorities of the city of Warsaw. A crouching naked female figure pulls a naked child from a surging wave. The artist also created this composition in white marble: "Motherhood III," now in the collection of the National Museum in Poznan, was presented at the Vienna Secession exhibition in 1905 and awarded a gold medal at the time. The masterful depiction of the body in a difficult position, in tension and violent movement, are features of many of Szymanowski's works. A fragment of the composition focused on the gesture of a mother and child kissing completes the characteristics of the artist's work with the delicacy and lyricism of the shot.
Ewa Ziembinska
Collection of Polish Painting to 1914
National Museum in Warsaw
Biography
The most outstanding Polish sculptor of the modern era. He studied at the Drawing Class under Wojciech Gerson in Warsaw, and then in Paris, in the studio of Cyprian Godebski (1875-79) and École des Beaux-Arts under Eugene Delaplanche (1979-90). He also studied painting at the Munich academy. From 1895-1905 he lived in Paris. In 1913 and in the period 1921-22 he stayed in Italy. From 1922 he lived in the country. In his early work, Szymanowski devoted himself mainly to painting, creating paintings of rural themes, landscapes and portraits. Circa. 1976 he devoted himself almost exclusively to sculpture. His early sculptures showed the influence of the detail-oriented and realistic modeling of academic aesthetics. However, later, thanks to the inspiration of the work of Constantin Meunier and especially Auguste Rodin, the form of Szymanowski's sculptures began to undergo generalization, and a fluid, Art Nouveau contour and sketchy treatment of the solid appeared. The asymmetrical form arranged in the shape of a wave, which dynamizes the composition, became a favorite motif used by the artist. Among the artist's outstanding completed monumental works are the ARTUR GROTTGER Memorial in the Planty park in Cracow (designed in 1898, unveiled in 1903) and the FRYDERYK CHOPIN Memorial in Warsaw's Lazienki Park. Among Szymanowski's rich oeuvre, portraits are also noteworthy, in which faithful rendering of the model's physiognomy is combined with sketchy virtuosity in modeling the figure (e.g., Jacek Malczewski, Leon Karwacki, Janina Wierusz-Kowalska).
