Polonics in French regional museums

Despite many years of research into Polonics in France, the abundant collections of works by 20th century artists who came from Poland in the country's provincial museums are still largely unknown. Collioure in the Languedoc, which is well-known and frequently visited by Poles, boasts a museum of modern art, founded as early as the 1930s by the painter Jan Peszke (1870-1949), with an extensive legacy. The collection of this artist has already been publicised to some extent in Polish art history. The same museum also owns the works and documentation of the Warsaw-born painter Tadeusz Mucha (1905-1995), known as Willy, who was instrumental in organising post-war artistic life in Collioure, but who is completely unknown in Poland. Large collections of works by well-known sculptors of the twentieth century can be found in Beauvais (Jan Lambert-Rucki, 1888-1967), Mont-de-Marsan (Leopold Kretz, 1907-1990) or the Paris suburb of Saint-Maur-des-Fossés (François Black, 1881-1959).

Deeply forgotten until recently was the small museum in the town of Guéthary in the Basque Country. Its main resource in terms of artistic collections is the work of Jerzy Klemens Swiecinski (1878-1958). This includes nearly one hundred sculptures, thirty unique ceramic works, several hundred drawings, sketchbooks and letters. The museum was established in the 1950s thanks to the artist's bequest of his work to the community. It was initially housed in temporary premises. It now uses the Villa Saraléguinéa, actually a palace in the regional Basque style, which was built in 1909. Jacques-Hippolyte Lesca (1853-1938), a local croissant and patron of Swiecinski.

Brief biography of Jerzy Klemens Swiecinski

The origins and beginnings of the artist's career are poorly recognised to date. He was born in 1878 in the Romanian Bukovina, in Radovce, into the family of Leon Swieciński and Adolfina Krospatschek (Kropatschek?). He studied medicine in the Moldavian city of Iasi, and was said to have taken drawing lessons from his brother. However, he became professionally active in the field of surgery. He deepened it from 1902 in Paris, where he specialised in gynaecology and even ran a practice. During the First World War, he worked in the French military health service.

It is also known that in parallel, at least from 1912 onwards, he was already occupied with artistic creation. In Montparnasse, in a circle where he may have come into contact with another Romanian immigrant, Constantin Brâncuşi (1876-1957), he began experimenting with ceramics, at which time his first sculptures were created. After the end of the war, he abandoned his medical practice altogether and devoted himself to sculpture, ceramics and occasionally painting. Although he remained self-taught, he was soon recognised as a professional artist. He was one of the pioneers of the so-called taille directe, or direct forging in stone, although his most outstanding sculptural achievements were made in modelling, gaining their final form in terracotta and bronze castings.

In 1918. Swiecinski took part in a Polish exhibition in Paris, the proceeds of which went to benefit soldiers remaining in France. Apart from this, however, his contacts with Poles in exile were sporadic, as was the case with the Romanian diaspora. However, in the documentation, carefully preserved in the Guéthary museum, we find ample evidence of his close relations with prominent representatives of French culture. He hosted, among others, the poets Louis Aragon (1897-1982) and Paul Valéry (1871-1945). He was also closely associated with the poets Paul-Jean Toulet (1867-1920) and Francis Jammes (1868-1938), whom he portrayed, as well as the writer Pierre Loti (1850-1923) or the well-known painter Clementine-Hélène Dufau (1869-1937). He designed a monument to the playwright Edmond Rostand (1868-1918), who settled in the Basque Country, but unfortunately this was never realised. In the inter-war period Jerzy Klemens Święciński was an important personage of the region, he was considered a "Polish Count" (he carefully emphasised his noble origin, among others using the Ogończyk coat of arms as a signature).

The works of J.K. Swieciński in the museum in Guéthary

The artist died in Bajon in 1958, and lived in nearby Guéthary from 1923, enjoying a magnificent villa-cum-workshop, called Leukats Baita (Cool Corner), suspended on the cliffs of the Atlantic Ocean. As Georges-Clément de Swiecinski, naturalised in France and constantly using the noble 'de' in front of his name there, he became one of the central figures of the cultural milieu under the Pyrenees. Although he exhibited in Paris, achieving several successes (including at international exhibitions in 1925 and 1937), he particularly valued his contacts with French friends involved in the revival of local Basque culture.

Jerzy Klemens Swiecinski's oeuvre is virtually unknown outside of Guéthary, which is the reason for his absence from both French and Polish art history. This is due to his absence from the history of art, both in France and in Poland, as it consists of a few tombstones in Paris, an altar relief in Suresnes near Paris, a few sculptures scattered in small French museums and an indeterminate number of casts and models which rarely appear on the antiquarian market. We can also see one bronze figure in the Royal Łazienki, where it is exhibited in the Gallery of Polish Sculpture as a former deposit of the National Museum in Warsaw.

Swieciński's extraordinary biography and interesting social and artistic relationships should not, however, obscure what can be seen in the Guéthary museum. These are original ceramic samples, in which one finds both elegant art déco forms and a search for the archaic, primordial role of clay vessels. There are also magnificent portraits of familiar Frenchmen and expressive religious sculptures with a powerful 'Prophet' and a delicate Joan of Arc; stylised images of a 'Japanese woman' and a 'Cambodian woman', in keeping with the oriental fashion of the time - the sculptor's masterpiece is perhaps the magnificent 'Sumotori' head. Finally, we will see fascinating inspirations from the peculiarities of Basque culture, with the iconography of their national game, the pelota.

It is easy to find analogies in Jerzy Klemens Swieciński's oeuvre to the classicising tendency in the sculpture of the inter-war period (including the Polish one) and several other art phenomena of the period - what is surprising, however, is the extent of these affinities. Among the most moving sculptures by Swieciński on display at the museum is the (undated, but created during the war) head entitled 'Dachau'. The artist's oeuvre, however, closes in this period. After the Second World War, the artist's career died quickly, he created very little and died in oblivion.