Zbigniew Jan Krygowski was born in Błażowa near Rzeszów on 17th October 1904 and died in Rzeszów on 23rd August 1992. He was a sculptor, wood carver, fine arts conservator, draftsman and a graphic artist, bookplate author, stage designer, decorator, educator, journalist, union activist and Armia Krajowa soldier. Above all, however, he was a painter.
Painting was an incarnation of his most secret dreams, a spiritual realm of reality and practical freedom. He regretted that he cannot BE in order to LIVE. He made the following note: Work to live and steal a grain of time to BE. The fate of Zbigniew, and of the entire Krygowski line started by Kazimierz Krygowski, Zbigniew’s father, was dictated by the fire of 1907 when Błażowa and the big house, newly bought and redecorated by Kazimierz, burnt down. Zbigniew remembered his father who „did not look after his personal property in the raging fire but was sitting on the church roof and protecting it against fiery firebrands. He was protecting it not only for his woodcarving decorations of the church interior but also for his civic duty of the fire brigade commander.” Kazimierz, a young, prosperous owner of the woodcarving workshop, a father of four sons, lost all his property. He was left with debts incurred in various banks. Two sons, Zbigniew and Marian had to start working in their father’s workshops as soon as they were grown enough. „He grew up in a workshop”, Adam Hannytkiewicz wrote in the recommendation letter to Stanisław Szczepański.
In 1925-1927, at the age of twenty-one, he started the School of Decorative Arts for Wood Industry in Zakopane. He left the workshop to get closer to fine arts and found his right place: „He had used the chisel in his family workshop for a couple of years already (…) so he was the first at school, being praised, awarded, exempted from the fee.” He would mention Władysław Skoczylas and Karol Stryjeński who: „noticed” him. The later activity devoted to sacral art was much more than mere service provision for him. The restrained, „realistic” form of his sculptures was subordinated to the liturgy-dependent and iconographic function. He got to like a deep-carved relief, not infrequently made from hard wood. His remarkable iconographic invention can be admired in the altars for the church in Kraczkowa, the structures of which were suggested by Adolf Szyszko-Bohusz. Those works, created in 1939-1944 and originating from the Romantic historical trend in the Polish art of 19th and 20th century, embody patriotic art. Their truly amazing feature is the updated images of historical figures and the symbolism of details. The head of the snake entwining the globe under the feet of Our Lady Queen of Poland is decorated with a swastika and red, five-pointed star.
In his sculptures he repudiated eclecticism and historism, and also „Neo-Gothic” style advocated by architects enriching churches with altar designs. His „typical” works belong to the so-called second Zakopiański style, reformed by Stryjeński in the spirit of the Polish art deco from the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris. The description by Jerzy Warchałowski defines also the sacral movables by Zbigniew Krygowski. „A certain sharpness of forms and lines, intersecting planes, a system of inner dovetails in the block boundaries, a predominance of geometrical elements, rhythmical movement of advancing and receding forms with a clear separation of the lit form and the shadowy one, planes meeting perpendicularly or connecting in a crystal-shaped object, a certain as if avoidance of an excessively smooth line.”
In 1927 Krygowski left for Poznań where his younger brother, Bogumił studied at the University of Poznań. Later, he became Professor of that university. Soon, their third brother, Zdzisław, an artist, painter and stained-glass maker, joined them to start a course in the School of Decorative and Industrial Arts (today’s University of Fine Arts). To support himself and to help his brothers, Zbigniew started to work as a sculptor and joined Polish Sculptors Association in Poznań. In 1929 he started his courses at the Institute of Fine Arts of Adam Hannytkiewicz. Another student was Alfred Lenica, but Hannytkiewicz, a student of Józef Pankiewicz at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow and at the Paris branch of that university, favoured Krygowski. At the end of the second year, following the general presentation of works, Professor Hannytkiewicz said: „For Krygowski there is nothing left but Paris! And that is how that all started.
In early 1931 the tutor ordered Krygowski to leave with him. He gave him the recommendation letter to Józef Pankiewicz who helped Zbigniew to arrange a lot of things. From the eastern station they went to Montparnasse where they inhabited the atelier of Artur Nacht Samborski. Krygowski stayed in the global capital of art from 1931 to 1933. With the students from the Paris branch of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow he would visit the Louvre where Pankiewicz was analysing the grandest works of art and uncovering the secrets of the painter’s alchemy. He would paint still life and nude figures and would listen to criticism (Martwa natura, 1932). He would also contemplate paintings in galleries. Together with Hannytkiewicz, they went to Olga Boznańska who received them kindly, allowed to see her paintings and talked to them about painting for a long time. They planned to visit Tadeusz Makowski but he would not return from Brittany and later they heard of his death. He remembered the windows of Makowski’s atelier were covered with plywood. He would paint together with Czesław Rzepinski whom he admired and with Artur Nacht-Samborski. His works were praised by Wojciech Weiss. In his Autoportret (Self-portait) from 1932 it is possible to hear the reverberation of paintings by Manet, van Dongen and Derain showing Classicist affiliations. The Stragan uliczny, another painting from 1932, has a planar composition and the silhouette articulation of colour areas. In Paris, in the atelier at Gambetty Street he painted the image of Błażowa as it stayed in his memory. In 1933 he submitted four painting for the Salon des indépendants and the jury chaired by Paul Signac accepted two of them (Paysage de Pologne and Une rue à Cachan) with no objections.
„I am extremely happy I took the plunge and submitted my works which was quite an effort. At that time I had no money and it was a miracle it came on the last day. Although I will not sell anything, my personal benefit from the juxtaposition of my works with several thousand other works is of utmost importance. You will never see as much in the atelier as you do at the exhibition. Here any shortcomings and virtues come to life, if any. My works are unpretentious but they are absolutely different from the large majority of mostly hopeless trash where you can perhaps find something better though, as a matter of fact, nothing extraordinary. (…) In connection with the exhibition, I had requests to send information on my artistic career and photos of my works from three art journals who will publish them together with appropriate articles. I have no money even for photos so it is impossible. It is not that important, after all.”, as he wrote in the letter to Bogumił and Ludmiła Krygowska. However, as M. A. Pascal-Lewis wrote in Les artistes d’aujourd’hui, Krygowski is an outstanding talent and he reached the level which is bound to bring him recognition, fame and financial success in three years (!). In 1933 he could no longer endure the stress of daily poverty and left Paris.
„The most important thing for me is painting. I would like to paint a lot from life for some time. (…) I do not think that leaving Paris is a disaster. It will be fine if only I manage to find some opportunity to paint in Poland so as not to waste time. (…) Surely, I could sooner achieve something in Paris than in Błażowa but I would certainly need more money. And I have had none for a couple of months. Neither for paints nor for canvass, not to mention food.”
Hannytkiewicz tried to bring that decision to naught. Pani H… encloses a couple of empty phrases. I have not had a patron for the whole year and now one is to be found easily”, Zbigniew explained and left for Poland. Years later it turned out that had he not left for Paris with Hannytkiewicz, he would have received an attractive scholarship from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Adam Hannytkiewicz would still beg him not to waste his talent and invited him to Paris irrespective of his financial standing. Unfortunately, Zbigniew, full of youthful hope, did not foresee the close onset of a „hot” and then „cold” war and the closing of the Iron Curtain. He did not visit Paris again. He was not lucky enough to stroll the Louvre or to admire Monet’s paintings for hours in the Conservatory. In 1988 his daughter Anna went to the French capital as if in his name. In Musėe d’Orsay she admired paintings of Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and van Gogh. After her return home, her stories helped her father to return in his memories to places he found so enchanting in Paris.

He lived in Błażowa and in Rzeszów. In 1933 he joined the Professional Association of Fine Artists for the District of Krakow, in the painters’ section. He got in touch with painters from Rzeszów, associated in the Painters’ Guild called „Pazdur”. Hannytkiewicz insisted on his return to France and suggested a trip to Italy. And when Zbigniew informed him he was going to marry Maria Bieniek on 12th June 1937, he claimed he was wasting his talent and career opportunities. In short, wasting his life.
Hannytkiewicz was largely right. The work in the woodcarving workshop could not be combined with painting „Paris-like” paintings. After many years of spiritual solitude, Zbigniew would sarcastically call himself a walking dead in the fits of frustration but several dozen years later he wrote: „The life of an artists, his distress and suffering are of little importance. The vital thing is that the spring of creative activity inside never dries out.
Nazi occupation thwarted all his earlier plans. It questioned the opportunities to paint. He got the chance to support himself and his family by wood carving works in the church in Kraczkowa. At the same time he was engaged in the work of Armia Krajowa. When the war finished, he moved, together with his family, to Rzeszów where the artistic life exploded. The Rzeszów Association of Fine Artists was created, with him being a co-founder. In 1947 he restored his contacts with the Krakow society, this time as the member of the Krakow Branch of the Union of Polish Fine Artists. He was a chairman of the Rzeszów Branch of the Union and then of its Rzeszów agency. In late 1944 Adam Hannytkiewicz came to Rzeszów once more. He presented a vision of the School of Crafts and Art Industry in Sędziszów Małopolski. He managed to open it despite the war chaos. Before he employed Krygowski there, he went to Wrocław to create the Polish Higher School of Fine Arts. Nonetheless, that was the start of the educational adventure of Zbigniew. In early 1946 he started to educate young trainee painters in the Free School of Fine Arts in Rzeszów .
In 1956 he received an artistic award of the Voivodeship National Council in Rzeszów. This award was a symbol of appreciation for the value of his works, his contribution to promoting arts and development of the artistic community in Rzeszów. He became the leader of the Union Branch in Rzeszów, and also a showpiece of that community. By a resolution of the Main Board of the Union, Zbigniew Krygowski was awarded a Gold Distinction for his special personal contribution to the fulfillment of objectives and tasks of the Union of Polish Fine Artists on 9th January 1976.
After 1989, interest arouse in his veteran past, fight in the ranks of Armia Krajowa and editing conspiratorial press. That was crowned with the award of the Voivode of Rzeszów in 1991.

Before World War II he got acquainted with a painter from Rzeszów, Antoni Józef Kamiński, a colourist cognizant of his own beliefs. He also got to know Marian Stroński who spent a couple of years in Paris near Mose Kisling. He made friends with Jadwiga Dziędzielewicz, a student of Leopold Gottlieb and Czesław Rzepiński. What is more, he came to know Zdzisław Truskolaski. Those were truly important contacts. He found common grounds with those artists, identified with their views and became a founder of the Colourists’ Group initiated in 1946 by Truskolaski. In the paintings by Truskolaski, considered controversial by Zbigniew, he found challenges forcing him to modify his programme developed under the influence of Hannytkiewicz and Pankiewicz. About 1958 he finished the „colourist fasting” which lasted since the beginning of his unsatisfactory painting and started to exhibit paintings which could not be blamed for their formalism, a charge so popular in 1950-1955. Towards the end of his life he wrote: …there are only two things eternal and not subject to the death rottenness, that is the ever-lasting return of flowers in spring and the reproduction of that return in art.
He dreamed of a perfect world and painting was its embodiment. Michał Bogdański, painter and Zbigniew’s uncle, the first guide and artistic role model, proved the existence of such a world palpably, so to say. Zbigniew’s arrival in Zakopane in the right time was a true stroke of good luck. Karol Stryjeński revised the teaching at school led by him since 1925, the year when Zbigniew Krygowski started his education there. He abandoned educating reproducing craftsmen and promoted that of independent creators. „All patterns and models were rejected. (…) There was no copying nature, there were tools and material to be used for own plane and then block solution, Zbigniew recalled. „Zakopane was my first step towards the goal I had been striving for”, he wrote later. Adam Hannytkiewicz became another role model and mentor. Thanks to the knowledge acquired in Zakopane, Krygowski understood the essence of the colourist programme. He obtained knowledge of the abstract elements of the work of art, the awareness of phenomena which materialise solely in a diverse material.
Zbigniew Krygowski practiced wall painting using the sgraffito technique, dry fresco, stained-glass making and mosaic. However, the majority of his works are painting studies or compositions, devoted to religious and lay themes. There are some paintings depicting allegorical and symbolic scenes (Ludzie i ludziska). He painted self-portraits like the one completed in 1932 where the artist emerges from the crowd at a Paris street or „Rembrandt-like” one from 1946 presenting the full personality of the artist and also a specific map of experience from the Nazi times. He would paint „official” self-portraits and the ones inspired by the Kapists. Nude art was rare though it is impossible to forget about the intriguing painting called Osamotniona, resembling The Bathers by Cezanne and the nude sculptures by Matisse. He painted genre scenes (Przy kuchennym stole, Muzyka idzie), with the prevailing rural themes (Na odpust w Borku Starym , Wsłuchani w ciszę, W drodze do szkoły), fieldwork (Na zagonie, Sierpień, Wspólna praca) and relax in the wild (Na leśnej polanie).
The images of the non-existent wooden churches, surrounded by people in specific folk clothes (Kościół w Świlczy), commissioned by Franciszek Kotula, are also genre scenes which became historical and ethnographic documents at the time of their creation. Still life was, besides the landscape, the theme most often pursued though the latter is the richest part of Zbigniew Krygowski’s paintings. He would paint submontane landscape, „long-distance” views with the remote and elevated horizon observed from a hill overlooking the area (Widok na górę Chełm), with a neutral zone between the painter’s eyes and the landscape components (Góry nad Wetliną). Some of his works are reminiscent of a perspective painting (Motyw z Iwonicza I).
He acquired the basic knowledge on colours and hues in Zakopane but the real breakthrough took place in Poznań thanks to Hannytkiewicz. The colours used in Poznań period are subjective but subjected to the third dimension imperative. His works are characterised with a multitude of hues though he did not avoid achromatic grey paints and would also use black. He sought the final quality of hues on his palette, mixing them with black and white which made his colours grayish (Ludzie przy słupie ogłoszeniowym). The colours of his Poznań paintings made in an opaque technique are characterised with hue saturation and lowering of the chromatic tone. The colours of his Paris paintings, however, with the predominant smooth, transparent areas and glazes, were abstract, subjected to the planar composition. Those were polychromatic compositions (Une rue à Cochan) or the ones heading towards monochromatism (Autoportret, Stragan uliczny). The painting volume was replaced with flat silhouette colour areas deprived of the contour effect. In 1933-1947 he tried to find his own colour form. Far from Hannytkiewicz and Pankiewicz, he experimented in the way they would probably have not approved. He created achromatic paintings where he applied the extreme forms of Kapists’ postulates. Their colours are still intentional, subjected to the requirements of planar composition. In some paintings (Kaczeńce, Piwonie, Portret żony) there is a division between a monochromatic „background” and synthetic multicoloured arrangement, treated as an extended dominant of the entire painting. Most paintings are monochromatic compositions painted with impastos (Most na Wisłoku). The painterly substance of paintings created in that period consists of mostly warm-coloured areas with various textures. Diverse red and brown hues are transformed not always in line with the rules prescribed by a realistic study. A chromatic scale of particular hues is expanded. Silhouette areas are replaced with modulated areas, colour areas broken into a multitude of components defined by the painter subjectively though subordinated to the colour disposition of a painting. The pallette is complemented with abundant gray hues.
In late 60′ and early 70′ of 20th century he definitely determined the colour formula of his painting. At that time oil paintings were made with areas of a specific, liquid texture, with some areas left untouched or with white priming paint visible from behind. Their texture resembled water colours (Bez tytułu, Piątkowskie pagórki, Motyw z Czudca, Motyw z Błażowej, Stare domy i drzewa, Pejzaż). The colours had been purified and ordered. They include „pastel” chromatic hues with a specific temperature, complemented with a prevalent number of white and light gray areas. White and grey hues were modified on his pallette with a sense of consequent and simultaneous contrast mechanism. They are complemented with light grey (Wnuczki i kurki, Pejzaż) which, juxtaposed with chromatic hues, get the properties of „colourful” hues. Colour areas are combined according to the complementary contrast rules. Hue saturation was diminished but the composition hierarchy is established by the intense arrangements of the brightest hues and the maximum contrast of intense ones (Widok z Czudca, Bez tytułu).
In certain paintings the colour code of the composition is reduced to the distribution of chromatic accents. Chromatic tones are lowered, as if turned down, while the brightness tones become very light. The paintings created after 1984 are a sublimation of new painting experience. Their nearly monochromatic colours are made from precisely selected hues, with specific temperature, usually highly whitened or broken with light grey on the pallet. Zbigniew Krygowski’s intentions were perfectly read by the critics. „This is a sparing expression of the inner peace and admiration for the beautiful world. The paintings by this artist are monochromatic, subdued, with the tone of a silver mist lit up with some sun rays. Soft outlines of hills, cubes of houses in the townlet situated in the valley and slender church towers emerge from this mist (…)”
The colourism in the Polish 20th-century painting, the works of Kapists, were recklessly considered a historical phenomenon although there has not been a monograph devoted to that trend so far nor to a Paris Committee or to the Paris branch of Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. As the student of the Paris branch of that school, Zbigniew Krygowski represents the „Polish section” of École de Paris. The paintings by this artist are little known though important fraction of the artistic heritage of the modern Polish colourism. The image of the Polish 20th-century colourism will be incomplete without the works by Zbigniew Krygowski. He continued his painting experiments started in late 20′ in the 20th century until the end of the century. He discarded the temptation to create his individual style at all costs. He abandoned the wish to „coin” such a style. He believed that the painter’s duty is to learn the nature and to remain faithful to his or her own feelings. At the age of almost ninety, he copied the symptomatic statement of Corot: „Nature is the source and teacher. An artist should aspire to represent its truth with a submissive conscience and persistence. There is no art without a genuine affection. The original emotions are the most credible guide. The general nature and mass distribution in the painting are decisive. The details come next.
He abandoned the studies from nature only towards the end of his life to create „managed” compositions with the images of his relatives (Moja gromadka). He made use of the experience acquired during endless dialogues of the artist and the painting motif observed. There is no imitation of recognised pieces of art in them. According to Carot’s statement he mentioned frequently: „Whoever wishes to imitate the great, resembles a man following them. What does he see and can copy? Perhaps only the way they look like… from behind.

In the paintings by Zbigniew Krygowski the colours are identical to the painting composition (Motyw spod Łańcuta), though the painting essence is in the composition arrangement: The entire matter of this recurring landscape (…) has taken place in himself for half a century, in the colour rhythms, light intensity, the arrangement of two areas side by side which are later surprised with one another. He perceived the modern colourism as a synthesis of Cezanne’s studies and creation. The combination of the psychophysical study of nature with what Cezanne called a „museum”, not only a painting culture of masterpieces but also they spiritual dimension, the sense of absolute harmony. The study of a motif helps to recognise the invisible rhythm of nature. The rhythm of nature section transferred to the canvas becomes a module of painting order, determining the level of colour combinations. The landscape motif was the starting point for defining the abstract concept of a painting (Krajobraz z Wiśniowej, Góry nad Wetliną). Real spatial relations change into a painting substitute, a specific composition arrangement, synthesis of the directional tension grid and the layout of lines and areas, and most of all the rhythmical colour combinations (Bez tytułu – Błażowa). The two-dimensional plane becomes equivalent to the three-dimensional landscape „architecture” structured with appropriate colour combinations (Panorama Błażowej). He did not shrink from noting the sense of contours. He would sometimes express the form by means of lines only (Błażowa) or would combine lines and colour areas (Księże Budy i kościół), and also apply the contour per se (Drzewa w górach).
The landscape studies by Zbigniew Krygowski are „topographical maps” of the actual colour relations and, as a result, of the actual spatial relations. The „neoCezannism” is what differentiates Krygowski from other Kapists who abandoned the third-dimension transformation postulated by Cezanne, sticking to the painter’s canvass arrangement. The Kapists’ postulate that the righter the colour, the fuller the form, is a reverberation of Cezanne’s idea. Such an approach can be called „Cezanne’s ruler” which would be a paraphrase of Mandelbrot’s rule who claimed that the smaller the ruler used, the longer the shore of the coast being measured. The better realisation of the hue sensation is, the truer the three-dimensional reality becomes. Zbigniew confirmed his ideas by reading the confessions of Jan Cybis devoted to painting and, more specifically, to the birth of colour, eternal returns to paintings from years long gone, when the one correct cinnabar spot was finally found and the painting came to life, happened. After 1945 Zbigniew painted several motifs from Wiśniowa. That was an extraordinary place where mobilised Jan Cybis went to war in September 1939 from. In 30′ 20th century the palace in Wiśniowa, property of painters Jan Mycielski and Helena Mycielska née Bal, was used as Kapists’ headquarters. Why did Zbigniew Krygowski not visit Wiśniowa before 1939? It is hard to believe he heard of the Kapists’ Wiśniowa only from Helena Mycielska née Bal when she became a member of the Union of Fine Artists in Rzeszów in 1945. Wiśniowa smells of painting!, said he, presenting his paintings from Wiśniowa with a mysterious smile.

The painting of Zbigniew Krygowski flows from the most important source of the modern painting and modern art that is the artistic legacy of Cezanne in a specific version read by Pankiewicz. His works belong to the part of the Polish painting which contributes to the creation of a global phenomenon the French call peinture peinture that is „painting as… painting” in English. Painting perceived in this way implements the anthropological affliction of mankind, possessing the ability to learn the matter and also, as if incidentally, to explore the matter, the gift of non-substantial expression. Of discovering the truth with hues and colour. The colour constantly hidden behind an impenetrable veil of mystery.

Jacek Kawałek