TEMATYKA ŻYDOWSKA W TWÓRCZOŚCI JÓZEFA PANKIEWICZA W KONTEKŚCIE SPOŁECZNO-POLITYCZNYM
JEWISH THEMES IN JÓZEF PANKIEWICZ’S ART IN THE SOCIO-POLITICAL CONTEXT

Summary/Abstract: The paper examines Jewish motifs in Józef Pankiewicz’s works. The artist created them in the 1880s in Warsaw, occupied then by the Russian Empire and inhabited mostly by Poles and Jews. Most of these pictures were published as woodcuts and autotypes in newspapers disseminating positivist ideology and social program. Until now, the researchers have focused on analyzing only the style of these pictures, treating them as a short phase on the way to later symbolist, truly modern Pankiewicz’s art. A close scrutiny of his works from the Warsaw period reveals a specific visual representation of Jewish figures. They are depicted as isolated from other people, covered by shadows, placed in the oppositional relation to the traditional symbols of Warsaw, such as the King Sigismund’s Column and the Mermaid Statue, as well as to Christian architecture. The author of the paper draws the conclusion that the tensions in Polish-Jewish relationships which increased in the 1880s, being rooted in the political and economic history of Warsaw and shaped by contemporary persecution of Jews in the Russian Empire, are visualized in Pankiewicz’s works.

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