Kazimierz Sichulski (1879-1942) was an inborn disciple of the Young Poland masters. He sought his own artistic paths. He was one of the most prominent Polish artists whose art was inspired by the culture of the Hutsuls, the Rusyn highlanders of the Eastern Carpathians. "Hutsul Madonna" is a triptych from 1909, which has been in the collection of the Vienna Gallery since 1912.

The beginnings of Kazimierz Sichulski's work
There would be no Kazimierz Sichulski as we know him without Kraków, although initially everything indicated that the artist would be connected with Lviv. Born on the river Poltva in 1879, he enrolled at university in his hometown, choosing law as his field of study. However, his love for art won out and almost simultaneously he began his artistic studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and the Imperial Austrian Museum of Art and Industry in Vienna. Under the watchful eye of the Young Poland professors: Leon Wyczółkowski, Józef Mehoffer and, above all, Stanisław Wyspiański, he honed his Art Nouveau brushstrokes. At the same time, together with his literarily, musically and artistically talented colleagues, he founded the "Green Balloon" cabaret.

The group's performances and vernissages were held in Apoleni J. Michalik's patisserie, known as the Michalik's Den. Sichulski was responsible for the original décor of the establishment, which included portraits of the bohemians of the time, headed by Tadeusz Żeleński "Boy", Feliks Jasieński "Manggha" and - note - Pan Twardowski. As is often the case in caricature, his subjects were characterised by exaggerated features: big noses, bulging eyes, and yet - as Kornel Makuszyński recalled - "there was not a snowman among them who would be offended, although Sichulski brought out from [each] a primeval and deeply hidden monkey". As a painter, he not only entertained with his works, but also collaborated with the Hagenbund, the Austrian art movement that preceded the famous Vienna Secession. The artists gathered around him aimed to break with the conservative understanding of art, both in form and content. In the case of Kazimierz Sichulski, these inspirations were soon to bear fruit.

The Hutsul Region perpetuated in art
In 1904, at the instigation of the painter Władysław Jarocki, Sichulski visited Hutsulszczyzna for the first time - a mountainous region in the Eastern Carpathians, inhabited by Ruthenian highlanders who came, among others, from Wallachia and the Southern Carpathians. They were not a homogeneous ethnic group, but rather a mixture of different nationalities. However, they were united by their religion - the Orthodox Church, as well as the dialect, formed on the basis of the Ruthenian language and Polish and Wallachian. From the mid-14th century, the Hutsul Region was part of the Kingdom of Poland and later the Republic of Poland, and after the partitions - of Austrian Galicia. It constituted a peculiar cultural, linguistic and religious palimpsest, which for the turn-of-the-century artist must have appeared as an unexplored land.

Fascinated by this land and its inhabitants, Kazimierz Sichulski later returned there many times, which resulted in a variety of works. The combination of his talent with the fascinating culture of the Carpathian mountaineers, especially a certain severity and wildness exaggerated due to its exotic - from the artist's perspective - character, gave rise to a new aesthetic quality. This is how the Lviv art historian Władysław Kozicki described Sichulski's work in 1926:

. No one had ever before seen such furious bravado, such momentum defying all restraints, such unbridled dynamism, such nonchalant contempt for pedantic correctness, for everything sweet, smooth, polished and academic.

Sichulski did not limit himself to immortalising the otherwise fascinating Hutsul festivities - all those wesil'ij, swiatcew, holovosikyw. He was also bent on portraying, especially with pastels, the ordinary-unusual inhabitants of highland villages, with great delicacy but also reliability.

Kazimierz Sichulski's works inspired by Hutsul
. And in his artistic passion, he drew fully on the Hutsul reality, reaching for colours, patterns, textures to graft them onto seemingly classic historical, mythological and religious themes. Among the latter, Marian variations were predominant. This is also how various versions of the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Three Kings and the Bogurodzica were created, among which the Hutsul Madonna has an indirect place. We can only guess that Mary's face, closed eyes and hands were lent to the artist by some local beauty. Also, the child - not, as in the canon, an infant, but rather an overgrown several-year-old - was probably seen among the slender Hutsul underpants. Although, the longer we look at his face, the more clearly we begin to see the resemblance with the offspring portrayed by Stanisław Wyspiański - Stas, Helenka or Mietek. Also the lower parts of the painting, which is - let us not forget - an example of a triptych frequent in Sichulski's oeuvre, show strong traits of the author of "The Wedding". Thus, we have a familiar shot of strongly stylised vegetation and a kind of horror vacui; there are no empty spaces in the painting. The theological reference in the very composition of the figures is also intriguing. Although - inevitably - the mother is larger and taller than the child, in order to redress the hierarchies familiar to iconography, Sichulski painted her with her head bowed down and her arms towards her son, the de facto King. Moreover, the woman does not even dare to raise her eyes, on the one hand showing respect to God by doing so, and on the other not wanting to distract the viewer's attention from the one who should be most important in the painting.

Kazimierz Sichulski and his Hutsul Christmas
The figure of Jesus is depicted here in a perverse way. He is not a baby but a toddler, not a sweet little king but rather a little shepherd boy with a penetrating gaze. Although he is wearing an ornate serdak and a white shirt, there is something poor about him. Let's take a look at his feet. He has, like his mother, golden, but - note! - two different sandals. As if the painter thus wanted to remind us of the dichotomy of their nature: God-man and mother-girl. In his Hymn to the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Adam Mickiewicz described the birth of Christ with a short, but very telling four-line poem:

. Thunder, lightning!

Became, became;

Virgin Mother.

God flesh!

Kazimierz Sichulski used many more means for his work. Nevertheless, in some bizarre, synesthetic way, the two artefacts - lyric and painting - unexpectedly combine into a coherent whole. Instead of literary thunder and lightning, the painter has used an abundance of gold, which, used in the form of a mosaic, adds a Byzantine flavour to Jesus and Mary. The colour of the precious metal is not only present in the obligatory nimbus, especially for eastern art, but also dissolves further. In the ground plan of the painting, it takes up a third of the picture, although individual golden reflections, like strands of Hutsul braid, shine through elsewhere. However, those who believe in the three-dimensionality of the representation behind the virtual reproduction will be mistaken. For we are not dealing here with a real mosaic, but only with elements made with tempera and pastels on paper and later pasted onto canvas. It sounds rather complicated, but the effect - even if it was only meant to be a sketch, a preparatory work for a full-fledged decorative painting, probably to decorate some temple in its full glory - is excellent.

Well, this is not the first time that Sichulski's visionary plans ended up on design cartoons. After all, in the portfolio of this versatile artist, one can find also adaptations of stained-glass or polychrome paintings, also on the theme of Christmas, single pastels and, above all, the already mentioned caricatures, of which he was a master.

Painting by Kazimierz Sichulski at the National Museum in Kraków
Until 2 January 2022, this is the first time a painting by Kazimierz Sichulski has been exhibited in Poland at the National Museum in Krakow. This is because it is usually admired in the Viennese Galerie Belvedere, to which it was purchased in 1912.

Christmas time is also an opportunity to reflect on the mystery of Christmas at home, away from the commercial hustle and bustle. Not the ones from colourful folders or TV commercials, but full of metaphysical mystery, as in the biblical scenes immortalised by Sichulski.