Witold WOJTKIEWICZ (1879-1909), Clowns

watercolor, cream paper, 56 x 68 cm (light frame)
Signed p.d.: Wojtkiewicz .../ 1905

cf: Ceremonies, Witold Wojtkiewicz 1879 - 1909 [exhibition catalog VII - VIII. 2004, National Museum in Warsaw, exhibition commissioner E. Charazinska], Warsaw 2004, p. 115.

Wojtkiewicz's works are a rarity on the antiquarian market, most of the works of the prematurely deceased artist are in museum collections. A representative of modernism and early expressionism, he was a member of groups: "Zero", "Five" and the Society of Polish Artists "Art", began as a caricaturist and magazine illustrator.
In 1905 Wojtkiewicz began working on a series of paintings and drawings entitled "Circus." It is a world of imagination, daydreams, the grotesque, a deformed reality populated with pierrots, marionettes, where life is mixed with art, and the semblance of joyful fun created by them hides the tormenting truth of everyday life.
The painting Clowns depicts three clowns together carrying the stem of a giant orchid. In the exhibition catalog, about the presented work, Irena Kossowska writes: the finesse in rendering the wrinkle-covered faces-masks of the comedians, faces frozen in an expression of fierce stubbornness, effort and determination-seems unsurpassed. Every detail of their costumes - the spreading intricately ruffled crepe, the buff pants, the pom-pom shoes, and even the stately button-marks parodying the jester's grimace - is circulated by soft, supple lines, unerringly defining the shape. The expression of the pure line, once gray, once blue or pink, is complemented by the fluidity of the watercolor stain, transparent, at times fading, then again gaining colorful power. The ethereality of the figures suspended in the abstract space makes them similar to dreamy phenomena realizing the pursuit of a goal that, although real, remains undefined, unknown, elusive. The lyrical tone of the scene is intensified by the sophisticated juxtaposition of pinks, blues and grays familiar to Wojtkiewicz's art. A strong accent of pure, vivid orchid green sounds like a counterpoint against this background.