Busts without full detailing. The lower section has been reduced to a compact plinth and a fragmentarily defined torso. The sculpture is positioned facing forwards, with the head turned slightly to the left. The model’s face is highly expressive. The forehead is high and receding, with clearly defined wrinkles and a spiral or semi-circular modelling mark in the upper section. The eyes are deep-set, with strongly defined eyelids. The gaze is directed to the side, not towards the viewer, which lends the figure an air of alertness, wariness or inner tension.

The nose is sharply defined, with a pronounced bridge and nostrils. The cheeks are sunken and deeply furrowed. The lips are closed, narrow and almost clenched. The moustache and beard are rendered with texture but not for decorative effect. The facial hair accentuates the drama of the lower part of the face. The ears are prominent and rendered in a simplified manner, whilst the hair on the sides and back of the head forms an irregular, rough mass.

The sculpture depicts the artist’s father not as a typical commemorative family portrait, but as a dramatic study of physiognomy. The title suggests a personal connection, but the form is not sentimental. Szukalski emphasises old age, wrinkles, gauntness, the sharpness of the gaze and the facial expression. The portrait seems to focus on the body’s liminal state: weakness, ageing, illness or the proximity of death.

The most important element is the gaze. The eyes are not directed straight ahead. The subject looks to one side, as if beyond the frame of the sculpture and beyond the viewer. This technique strips the sculpture of the character of a calm, museum-like portrait. The face becomes tense, almost suspicious, full of psychological resistance.

The relationship between the face and the material is also significant. The smoothed areas of the forehead and nose contrast with the roughly modelled hair, facial hair and lower parts of the bust. The sculpture works through the tension between the precision of observation and the austerity of form. Plaster has not been treated as a neutral medium of academic modelling, but as a material allowing for a vigorous, at times harsh, treatment of the surface.

The sculpture is characterised by expressive realism, with a clear departure from academic idealisation. The modelling of the face is sharply varied: deep furrows, prominent brow ridges, sunken cheeks and a strongly defined chin create the image of a man who has lived through much, who is austere and psychologically tense. The form is not classically enclosed. The lower part of the bust is fragmentary, almost sketch-like. The hair and the sides of the head are rendered irregularly, in places resembling unworked clay.

In formal terms, the work can be regarded as an early example of a direction which, in Szukalski’s case, would later develop towards the monumentalisation of physiognomy, archaisation and the sculptural rhetoric of strength. Here, however, this artistic language remains tied to a specific, personal portrait.

Stanisław Szukalski was born in 1893 in Warta and died in 1987 in the United States. He was a sculptor, draughtsman, printmaker and art theorist, also known by the pseudonym Stach of Warta. His life spanned Poland and Chicago. As a teenager, he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, then went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków under Konstanty Laszczka. In 1913, he returned to Chicago, and it was then that ‘My Father’s Head’ was created. The sculpture was created in honour of Szukalski’s father, who was at that time close to death. This lends the work a personal and poignant dimension: it is not only a family portrait, but also a sculptural record of the experience of loss.