Franciszek Starowieyski, TA WERNYHORA, 1995

199,5 x 179,5cm - pastel, charcoal, wood panel, jointed

signed p.g.: TA vernyhora | 16 FS 95



Image reproduced and described:

- Franciszek Starowieyski. Year 1699, edited by Andrzej Stroka, Krakow 1999, p. 73 ill. in color, painting description p. 159;

- Graphics and Poster Gallery website.

Reproductions in the album and on the gallery's website show the state of the painting in 1999. Later, the artist made several changes in the composition. The dimensions of 200 x 300 cm are also given incorrectly with them.



This is the last of the golden ages - this is how Franciszek Starowieyski, who made clear references to Baroque aesthetics the basis of his individual, unique style, commented on the 17th century. He was a virtuoso of form. With the help of flawless drawing, he created naked female bodies with Rubensian shapes, entangled in various allegorical scenes. He depicted them most readily in dynamic arrangements on large formats, stamping them with a title integrally related to the work, which was meant to guide the viewer on the trail of cultural quotations and symbols. This was no different in the case of Tej Vernyhora, presented in the catalog, which was deliberately anti-dated to 1695, 300 years back. A group of figures crowded in the center of the composition - two women and a dog - stare poignantly at a distant point beyond the picture's frame. One of the characters raises her hand in a gesture well known from Jan Matejko's canonical 1884 work Wernyhora. The master of Polish history painting captured the Ukrainian bard at the moment of experiencing visions of future partitions and failed national liberation uprisings. The role of the visionary in Starowieyski is assumed by a woman, which is further emphasized by the pronoun "this." It's hard to figure out what is manifesting and troubling her - suffice it to mention that the black dog that accompanies her was seen in Polish tradition not only as an icon of fidelity and devotion, but also as an intermediary between man and "that world" (after: S. Filipek, Canis lupus familiaris. Symbolism of the dog in history, art and literature - an outline of the problematic, "Roczniki Humanistyczne", Volume LXIX, notebook 4, 2021, p. 460). Starowieyski, like Matejko, whom he valued for his dedication to a great idea, treated his work as a necessity to speak about things for which the word or letter is inaccessible.

The 17th-century panache, decorative calligraphy, as well as the surprising presence of surrealist elements against their background (including a bird's head with a sharp beak, fragments of unspecified machinery) visible in Tej Wernyhor give a complete picture of Jan Byk's artistic program (this was the pseudonym he adopted while still a student at the Krakow Academy). This is confirmed by the inclusion of a reproduction of the painting in the first album presenting his oeuvre to date - Franciszek Starowieyski. Year 1699 published in 1999. Cooperation with Starowieyski on its publication, recalled Andrzej Stroka, editor: Working on this book, from the idea for the title to the graphic design of the whole thing and strictly editorial work, gave me great satisfaction, which became even greater when I saw Frank's reaction. He was delighted, and did not make any corrections. We made the selection of works together. The album was intended to be a summary of Starowieyski's work: everything about Frank from A to Z. Due to the number of his projects and works, this selection was necessary (...) This was the first such complete edition of his works, the second one is still missing (I. Górnicka-Zdziech, Franciszek Starowieyski. Bull's Blood, Warsaw 2016, pp. 263-265).

After the publication, the artist continued to work on Vernyhora, which remained his property. Details introduced at that time, such as stitching the model's plump body with spikes, adding a "legend" of mysterious letters at the lower edge of the painting and supplementing the title with a pronoun, gave the work its final meaning and shape.



♣ A fee will be added to the auctioned price, in addition to other costs, based on the right of the artist and his heirs to receive remuneration in accordance with the Law of February 4, 1994 - on Copyright and Related Rights (droit de suite).

Franciszek Starowieyski (Bratkówka near Krosno, July 8, 1930 - Warsaw, February 23, 2009), who used the pseudonym Jan Byk, studied from 1949 to 1952 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow under Prof. Wojciech Weiss , after which he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, receiving his diploma in the studio of Prof. Michał Bylina in 1955. In the 1960s and 1970s, he gained the greatest recognition as a poster designer, in which he quickly rivaled the coryphaeuses of this art in Poland. He cultivated a poster of the author's type, with a recognizable style based on sweeping and at the same time calligraphic drawing, and above all surprising, surreal associations. Since 1964 he was the art director of the fashionable monthly magazine "You and Me." With time, the predominance in his achievements gained "pure" drawing, since 1980 often presented in the form of dynamic sessions of the so-called "Theater of Drawing", with the participation of models, audience and the artist himself, fulfilling in it the role of demiurge. He created many painting and drawing compositions emanating a surreal atmosphere of life on the verge of physical decay, being a contemporary version of the vanitas theme. Fascinated by Baroque culture, the artist has been anti-dating all his works by 300 years since 1970. The artist was the recipient of numerous awards, which he won at such exhibitions as the Sao Paulo Art Biennale 1973, the International Film Poster Exhibition, Cannes 1974, the "Annual Key Award", Los Angeles 1978, among others. He was in New York on several occasions at the invitation of the Kosciuszko Foundation. In 1980 he was a professor at the Berliner Hochschule der Künste, in the 1990s he taught at the European Academy of Arts in Warsaw.