Wladyslaw Podkowiński, SZAŁ, 1893

62,2 x 53,2cm - oil, canvas signed l.d.: WPODKOWINSKI



The painting is accompanied by an expert's report by Ms. Elżbieta Charazińska dated August 2021.



The vision of Frenzy of Exultation matured in Podkowiński for several years. The artist experimented mainly with colors, although the composition itself also underwent slight changes. At the end of his short life, when he was afflicted by a serious lung disease, a dark symbolic current came to the fore, the culmination of which was Frenzy of Exultation (1893-1894).



The featured painting is one of the sketches for this famous symbolic work. In its compositional solution it repeats the layout of the Frenzy of Exultation (final version of the painting 310 x 275 cm; MN in Krakow). The reliable number of sketches created is not known, despite research undertaken by many art historians. At the artist's monographic exhibition, it was possible to confirm the authenticity of four of them, as well as to establish the existence of another oil sketch and three drawings before the Second World War. Three of the known sketches are played out in black and orangish and brown ochre, while the fourth is limited to black with gray and golden ochre. (...) Inferring from the final (...) solution of the painting, the most important thing for Podkowiński was the strong, decisive contrast of the "white and black" parts. He arrived at it by eliminating - at the stage of sketches - other colors.

The history of the painting Frenzy of Exultation, as well as the legend accompanying it - since its creation - are among the most famous and intriguing stories in the history of Polish art. Podkowiński painted the final large version of the painting long and laboriously - from the autumn of 1893 to the spring of 1894 - in his Warsaw studio in the Kossakowski palace at 19 Nowy Świat St. It was preceded by numerous composition sketches, in which he reduced the color range under the influence of his thickening vision. Probably by that time the symptoms of a fatal lung disease, which the artist had contracted while still a student, had already intensified. Extremely sensitive by nature, with a delicate mental and physical structure, at the time he was strongly experiencing the drama of disappointed feelings for the wife of a close friend, a lady of society. He gave vent to these unfulfilled passions, causing remorse, in the fantastic-symbolic content of his paintings. He created them in parallel with landscapes saturated with sunshine and radiating affirmation of the world. He gave expression to this "split personality", among other things, in his charcoal-drawn Self-Portrait from 1892, in which he divided his face, full of painful tension, into a part hidden in darkness and exposed in light (...). However, the great manifestation of the artist's haggling feelings became Frenzy of Exultation.

In the depiction of a frenzied horse-beast ridden by a naked woman, we find a moralistic iconographic message with a tradition dating back to the emblematic 16th century. The unbridled horse represented "blind desire, blind passion," and the woman borne by it - submission to the senses, leading to perdition. At the time, the painting broke moral taboos. The frenzy of rapture was presented to the Warsaw public at a special exhibition of "one painting" in the Zachęta Gallery, March 18, 1894. This unusual canvas intrigued and disturbed viewers, attracted them by the strength of the emotional charge and triggered various interpretive conjectures. It boiled over in salons and the press. For five weeks, 12,000 viewers saw the exhibition of the infamous painting, and the critical voices were extreme in their assessments. Only young artists, including those penned by poet Kazimierz Przerwy-Tetmajer, hailed Frenzy as a manifesto of symbolic art. The temperature of the scandal was heated by the artist himself, who came to the exhibition on April 23, 1894 and demanded a ladder and a knife. He then climbed the ladder and, without a word of comment, cut up the canvas in front of a stunned casual audience. (...) The reasons were never explained. Thanks to the efforts of the artist's friends, the painting was restored and - in February 1895 - shown at his posthumous exhibition at the Zachęta Gallery, and then made a triumphant tour of many cities, drawing crowds of spectators. The painting also met with resonance among artists; and so, for example, Wanda Stanislawska wrote a sonnet that ends with the following words:



Twojam is! Your all, all - beast of fury

Frenzy!... God nor the world before my eyes,

Carry me terrible power - even to the bottom of hell!....



This passage perfectly demonstrates the emotional charge carried by this fascinating work. The same heated emotions also accompany the presented sketch.

According to the expertise of Ms. Elżbieta Charazińska



Compare with:

- E. Charazinska, Władysław Podkowiński, Catalogue of the monographic exhibition, National Museum in Warsaw, Warsaw 1990, pp. 32, 106, 125-128, 226, cat. no. I/54, I/120-125, no. II/250-252; numerous illustrations.



Wladyslaw Podkowiński (Warsaw 1866 - Warsaw 1895) - painter and draughtsman, one of the first Polish Impressionists, known as the author of the famous painting Frenzy of Exultation. He began his artistic studies at the Warsaw Drawing Class under Wojciech Gerson (1882-1885), then in the academic year 1885/1886 he continued them at the St. Petersburg Academy under the batalist B.P. Willewalde. Returning to Warsaw, he rented a studio together with his friend Jozef Pankiewicz. In 1889 they both went to Paris, where they came into contact with Impressionist painting, which influenced their later work. After returning to Poland (January 1890), the artist stayed in Warsaw and at the country estates of his painter friends - in Chrzęsne, Mokra Wieś, and Sobótka in Sandomierskie.
At that time he painted impressionistic landscapes, city views and portraits, sometimes enlivened with staffage. Beginning in 1892, he also created compositions with symbolic and literary content, different in color and mood - Dance of Skeletons (1892), Frenzy of Exultation (1893), Chopin's Funeral March (1894). In addition, starting in 1884, the artist worked for years as a cartoonist with the Warsaw magazines "Wanderer" and "Illustrated Weekly".