Konrad Krzyżanowski
Today is our last day of the special month with the amazing National Museum in Krakow's collection. We hope you enjoyed this wonderful selection of Polish art. :)
Konrad Krzyżanowski was connected with the Warsaw art community at the turn of the 20th century. He initially studied at the Kyiv Drawing School and continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, practicing his technique as a landscape painter under Arkhip Kuindzhi. He solidified his interest in landscape painting during his later studies in Munich at Simon Hollósy's private school. During his studies, he traveled to Nagybánya (now Baia Mare) in Transylvania, where, based on the French Barbizon, there was an artist colony focused on landscape painting. In 1904–1908, during plein-air trips with students from the Warsaw School of Fine Arts, Konrad Krzyżanowski continued landscape painting. In the summer of 1908, Clouds in Finland was created. The landscape has a unique mood. Compared to Krzyżanowski's other landscape impressions, generally sketches of small size, the painting surprises with its monumentality and grandeur.
The artist was not interested in a faithful reproduction of nature; he was fascinated by the spirited impressionistic illustration of the landscape. The subject of the painting allowed free, fast, sketchy, dynamic recording of painting impressions. It seems that the author consciously transformed nature to emphasize its intensity and liveliness. The color scheme was not without significance: the predominance of cold hues, compositions of blue and white color patches were enlivened with shades of green, pink and ocher. Clouds in Finland is an emotional and at the same time lyrical landscape in which the main character, as the artist puts it, is "full of golden contemplations,” a “crazy,” and “drunk” sky with majestic, billowing clouds, juxtaposed with a calm and cold sea coast.
P.S. The ever-changing sky has fascinated artists for centuries. Join us on a trip through depictions of various types of clouds in art!