Motyw Jerozolimy i jego znaczenie w malarstwie Leopolda Pilichowskiego (1869–1933)

Abstract

Leopold Pilichowski – a painter, art critic, social activist, and Zionist – belonged to the first generation of Polish-Jewish painters and was one of the few such artists who achieved artistic and commercial success. In his youth, he was associated with Lodz and the circle of painter Samuel Hirszenberg. He studied at the Warsaw Drawing Class of Wojciech Gerson, in Munich and Paris. He made his successful debut in 1888 at the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (TZSP) in Warsaw and the Parisian Salon on the Champs de Mars. He exhibited successfully in Polish cities – Krakow, Warsaw, Lodz, Lviv – at the Society of Friends of Fine Arts, TZSP, Jewish Society for the Propagation of Fine Arts, and abroad – in Paris, Berlin, London, Jerusalem, and New York. He traveled extensively. He visited Palestine several times. In 1905 he settled in Paris, and from 1914 he lived in London, where he was a member and president of three societies: the Association of Polish Jews in England, the Lodzer Benevolent Society, and the Ben Uri Literary and Art Society. He maintained contact with Poland. His oeuvre is diverse both in terms of form (starting from Munich academism to the colorism of the interwar years) and iconography. He took up genre themes including those with social overtones and cre- ated symbolic compositions, portraits, and, occasionally, landscapes. He was a proponent of the idea of Jewish national rebirth that would combine tradition with new models of man and culture based on the heritage of ancient Israel, which were developed by Ahad Ha-am and Boris Schatz. He painted scenes related to Jewish tradition, which were meant to serve as testimony to the past for future generations. However, among his most notable works are symbolic scenes relating to Jerusalem and its relationship to the renaissance of the Jewish people in their own country, including the famous Tree of Freedom, which represents the symbolic end of the eternal wandering of Diaspora Jews arriving in Jerusalem, or the monumental composition entitled The Opening of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1925. The second, equally important Zionist theme in his painting was the promotion of a new model of the Jew – the brave young man building his country in the painting Settlers (Chalucim), or a strong and noble leader of the nation (the portraits of Theodor Hertzel or Ahad Ha-am).