Stanisław Wyspiański
Most of our team comes from Poland but we rarely present Polish artists on DailyArt. So here it is — a portrait by Stanislaw Wyspianski, a true man of Renaissance (but living in the 19th century of course). Wyspianski was a playwright, poet, theatre director, originator of modern Polish theatre and of course — an artist. For a short time he approached Impressionism in his easel paintings, but the characteristic feature of his monumental polychromes and stained glass windows was the decorativeness of Synthetics and Nabis, strengthened with a dramatic expression. In his sharply outlined portraits he got out the psychology of personages with a strong, frequently curved, line— whereas children were treated with lyricism. In landscapes he combined the observation of nature with the eternal mystery of nature’s life, complicating their symbolic meaning with historiosophic messages. After a long fight with disease, he died prematurely at the age of 38.
Wyspianski most frequently used soft pastel techniques; his first pastel drawings were produced between 1890 and 1894. They mainly present the artist's family, friends and other artists. Here the artist portraited a 16 year old Liza Parenska, a daughter of a famous Cracow doctor, with a clenched fist and face expressing confidence. Liza with such a determination in her eyes seems to be quite a grown up young lady. Unfortunately,fate was not kind to her — she died of a drug overdose when she was 33, widowed a couple of months earlier, depressed and disillusioned.
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