Małgorzata Geron

Reception of Cubism in the Artistic and Theoretical Achievements of the Formiści Group (1917–1922)

The creation of the Formists Group, initially using the name Polish Expressionists that took place toward the end of 1917 in Krakow constituted the final phase of a process initiated before the First World War. For the artists who founded the group, born in the 1880s, the expressive possibilities of Polish art at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, stemming from Symbolism, Impressionism, Neoromanticism had sapped. The first step towards the contact with artistic avant-garde became the articles published in various periodicals printed in Lviv and Krakow. Among the texts containing facts on Expressionism, Fauvism, or Futurism, the articles on Cubism occupied particularly important spot. One of the authors, Basler, an art dealer and an art critic, who worked in Paris and belonged to the artistic milieu including, among others, Salmon and Apollinaire, frequently visited Krakow with his lectures, mainly on contemporary French art. Nonetheless, an element that turned out to be of major importance for the development of the group constituted the trips to the capital of France made by the group’s future members, Czyżewski, Chwistek, Niesiołowski, Z.Pronaszko, Mierzejewski, Zak and Gwozdecki. Direct contact with Cubism played a decisive role in shaping the artistic attitudes of Formists, as well as other artists from Central Europe. The process can be illustrated by the works created around 1912 by the Pronaszko brothers or by Czyżewski, after they returned to the country; they introduced to Polish artistic language new forms of expression in visual arts. The exhibitions organized by Formists between 1917 and 1922 apart from Krakow took place Warsaw, Lvov and Poznań, thus leading to the formation of anextensive artistic movement. Its purpose was to create a modern style, mostly based on the Parisian experience combined with trends coming from Berlin and Munich. An aspect of major importance was the matter of individual interpretation of forms, further emphasized by the name of the group, introducing to the works by Formists Futuristic dynamism, Expressionist deformation as well as Cubist geometrization and deconstruction of the structure of form. The formal issues were strongly emphasized in the theoretical texts written by Formists that included clear references to the publication of Du “Cubisme” by Gleizes and Metzinger.

Author's email:

m.geron@poczta.fm

DOI: HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.54759/ART-2024-0304

Full-text in the Digital Library of the Czech Academy of Sciences:
https://kramerius.lib.cas.cz/uuid/uuid:f1df72a1-73c3-4ff6-acf0-64d3ead6cf99

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