Very little has so far been written in Poland about Henryk Hryniewski and his work. His person and work are much better known in Georgia - the country where he was born and where he realised his most important works, and where the artist himself is regarded as one of the most important figures in the culture of the first half of the 20th century.

Henryk Hryniewski - a figure little known in Poland
There are several reasons for the unfamiliarity in Poland with the work and person of Henryk Hryniewski (1869-1938). The artist, although he was probably in the Kingdom of Poland several times, neither created here nor do we know anything about the presence of his paintings or drawings in Polish collections. Moreover, after the artist's tragic death at the hands of the NKVD in 1938, his studio was ransacked and many of his works were destroyed and dispersed. An unwritten conspiracy of silence surrounded the victim of Stalin's purges for years, and after the war there was no one in Poland for a long time to remember him. It was only at the beginning of the present century that Hrynevsky was remembered, first in his native Georgia, then in his homeland. The first biography of the artist will soon be published in Poland.

Hryniewski in the cultural milieu
Henryk Hryniewski studied painting and architecture in Italy and Germany, travelling with his mother and later alone in Western Europe; he also visited Warsaw and probably Krakow. At the very end of the 19th century, he returned to Georgia, which at the time, like part of the Polish lands, was part of the Russian Empire. He settled in Tiflis (now Tbilisi), as the rapidly developing multicultural capital of the Caucasus Viceroyalty was then called. He quickly found his place in the cultural milieu, becoming active in various progressive organisations and co-organising the Academy of Fine Arts and the National Museum.

The spectacular work of the Pole, which he created together with the architect Anatoly Kalgin (1875-1943), is the building of the Noble Land Bank in Tbilisi. Today it is part of the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia and can be visited during the day. The building is located on Lado Gudjashvili Street, a famous Georgian artist.

Tbilisi Noble Land Bank - landed credit society
The Tbilisi Noble Land Bank (Tyfliskiy Dvorianskiy Ziemielnyy Bank) - as its official name was - was established in 1874 as a manifestation of the independence aspirations of the Georgian elite. Initially, it was a noble credit society providing mortgage loans to Caucasian landed gentry. The initiative for its establishment came from within the Georgian elite; the main driving forces behind it were Prince Dimitri Kipiani, a liberal politician and social activist, and Ilya Chavchavadze, a writer, publicist and politician, later dubbed the father of Georgian independence; both canonised by the Georgian Orthodox Church.

Like several other important initiatives of patriotic and independence circles, the bank was an institution designed to strengthen Georgian society against the colonising and Russifying actions of the Empire. This is what Edward Strumpf, a young Polish scholar and traveller, wrote about it: "This Society, apart from purely economic matters, deals with agricultural matters, as an area of the national farm, gives subsidies to the agricultural magazine, designates a fund to support the Georgian theatre and publish scientific works" (Images of the Caucasus, Warsaw 1900).

Building of the Noble Land Bank in Tbilisi
. The initiative to build a new, representative edifice of the Noble Land Bank did not arise until the 20th century. A competition was announced, which was won in 1912 by the tandem of Hrynevsky and Kalgin. Construction began the following year; it lasted three years, which was undoubtedly a success given that the First World War broke out soon after construction work began. Apart from the merits of the architectural design itself, the competition's victory may have been determined by Henryk Hryniewski's previous work, as well as his proposed concept of interior decoration and architectural elements, which strongly referred to the tradition of medieval ornamentation in Georgian culture.

Hryniewski had a great deal of experience in this regard. For since his return to the Caucasus, he had taken part in ethnographic research missions to document the magnificent medieval temples and their decoration - wall paintings, bas-reliefs, capitals decoration, richly ornamented stone crosses.... From the innumerable drawings he made, a huge collection was created, which became a kind of self-made template for further works. Among other things, the artist used them to illustrate a large volume of the Collected Works of Ilia Chavchavadze, an undertaking initiated after the writer's secretive death in 1909. Work on the design of the book, also maintained in the spirit of Georgian modern renaissance, continued in parallel with the creation of the concept for the Bank building. As can be seen, Pole had a strong presence in the orbit of influence of the father of Georgian independence.

Architecture of the building of the Noble Land Bank
The edifice and its decoration were very well described by Georgian art historian Eka Kiknadze. She wrote of the façades best visible to the side of Gudiashvili Street and at Vachnadze Street converging towards it: "They are decorated with ornamental motifs borrowed from the decorations of Georgian churches of the 10th-13th centuries, including verbatim quotations from the temples of Akhtala [contemporary in northern Armenia] and Oshki [contemporary Öşvank in Turkey]. Most of the decoration, however, is the fruit of Hryniewski's imagination. [...] The most beautiful set of capitals can be seen along the façade of the building facing Gudiashvili Street. Each capitol is different, and in some cases even each of the four sides of the capitol differs in its ornamentation. The decoration of the capitals bears typical features of medieval Georgian architecture - decorative and simple at the same time. [...] The main decorative accents of the facades - the high windows, framed by twisted shafts, their vaulted finials with rich decoration - are characterised by a wealth of ornamentation. The tower rising at the junction of the facades, inspired by the forms of traditional towers from Svaneti [a high mountainous region in northern Georgia], is also striking."

Before entering the interior of the edifice, the beautifully decorated arcades of the exterior gallery, the ornamentation of the balustrades and the entrance doors are a delight. Further on, there is a spacious representative vestibule (vestibule), with dazzling vaulted painting ornamentation, a magnificent staircase with marble stairs encompassed by a carved balustrade. The vestibule "is supported by four pillars. The alabaster capitals stained light brown are decorated with zoomorphic figures. The dominant colour of the ceiling painting is blue, with distinct red and gold accents of floral ornamentation. [...] The painting of the staircase stands out for its beauty. Architecturally, this part forms an imitation of a dome vault with marked bays. Two tall windows are cut into the wall. The ceiling is completely covered with a circular, dynamic floral pattern, and the walls are left with large, monochromatic planes that balance the decorative saturation of the upper parts and fill the space with light and lightness."

From the vestibule, a staircase with ornate arches above the windows and with paintings on the ceiling leads to the main room on the first floor. "He was inspired by motifs taken from ancient Georgian architecture and illuminations in medieval manuscripts. These paintings can be regarded without hesitation as some of the best we know of in Tiflis interiors, both in terms of their scale and artistic level." Going down to the ground floor, we will still find the reading room now bearing the name of Henryk Hryniewski. It is worth seeing it and noting the harmonious combination of the decoration and the hall's architecture.

The Georgian scholar concludes her analysis: "The architecture and decoration of the Noble Land Bank is the most outstanding example of the process of Europeanisation of Georgian artistic reality at the beginning of the 20th century, which takes its beginning at the end of the 19th century and reaches its peak in 1910. Henryk Hryniewski's contribution to this process is invaluable. In the decoration of the building, Hryniewski "moderately doses the oriental fondness for ornamentation in a European way and creates a synthesis".

The wall decoration of this magnificent monument to modern Georgian culture was designed by Henryk Hryniewski. In recent years, the Henryk Hryniewski Hall of Art in the 3rd building of the National Library of the Georgian Parliament in Tbilisi, where a Polish library was launched, has undergone conservation work financed by the Polonika Institute and the Polish National Foundation. Its collection numbers nearly 10,000 volumes and is under the care of the Polish Institute in Tbilisi. The conservation work was carried out by the TERPA Foundation for the Protection of the Common Cultural Heritage. This is an important place for anyone visiting Tbilisi and interested in Georgian and Polish history and culture.