In the experimental batik workshop the Buszek method was used in the years 1913–1926 to make silk decorative/applied fabrics, such as scarves, kerchiefs, wall hangings, and cushions in the 'Javanese-Cracovian' style at the Kraków Workshops. Stickers, paper, and book-bindings were also batiked, as were various wood products. They were done on the horror vacui principle, filling every inch of the background with ornament. They used a wealth of decorative folk motifs from the Krakow vicinity, in particular the Krakow embroidery, the tradition of ornamental Sarmatian fabrics and sashes, and motifs from oriental art, all of which decidedly set their products apart from the contemporaneous European batiks. The fabrics enjoyed great success, while the technique itself swiftly became popular among Polish women.
In the early 1920s, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz polemicized with the practical activities of the artist and his theoretical premises. In a sketch entitled A Theory by Antoni Buszek and Certain Doubts It Raises vis-a-vis the Rebirth of Pure Art, he wrote:
These arts [pure and ornamental] were long ago joined and have since parted ways. Their artificial combination cannot produce the same old results, because the living conditions have fundamentally changed. A 'return to nature' (but in life, not in art) is but a fiction. Nothing can stop humanity in this development that is often misleading in many essential ways.(4)
Antoni Buszek performed educational experiments with children and young people at the Workshops from 1919–1922, and continued them in Warsaw, in 1922 at his own school, and, from 1923–1925, at applied art courses at the Association in Support of the Folk Industry. His greatest and most spectacular success was achieved at the International Exhibition of Decorative Art in Paris in 1925, where he received the Grand Prix and a gold medal for his teaching methods. In 1926 Buszek began running the 'An-bu', a chemical agents and paints factory, which he founded in Warsaw. In his Parisian period he had already gained some renown as a producer of paint, which he made by delving into old painting technologies and techniques.
Buszek used the experience he gained during his work with batik artists in the Krakow Workshops after the war, running courses for workers in the faience factories in Włocławek and Koło. The decorators working there were taught beforehand to multiply ready-made patterns 'automatically'. They often achieved significant proficiency in painting, but they never tried to paint independently. The aim of the Włocławek courses for outstanding painters, organized by Buszek in 1949 through BNEP, was to 'raise the aesthetic level of production without reducing the work output, and to inspire visual creativity (by acquainting the participants with the principles of constructing ornament composition and color schemes)'.(5) One of the course participants, the painter Salomea Zajkowska, recalled years later:
He only started decorating the plates and bowls more richly after the war. When Professor Buszek and the Grześkiewiczes came to us, the decorations we made became much richer. Professor Buszek told us to paint what we could. Some I liked more than others, but mainly his work was ‘Buszekesque,' densely packed and with very varied designs.(6)
Antoni Buszek also designed 'ceramic stencils,' which were used in the porcelain factories in Ćmielów, Bogucice, Jaworzyna Śląska, Tułowice, and Wałbrzych. From 1951–1952 he lectured in ceramics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
The enormous popularity enjoyed by the hand-painted 'folk' faience in the 1970s and 1980s meant that it quickly became a 'deficit good', which did not favor the development of the individual talents of the painter/decorators. To keep up with the market demand, tried and tested designs were mass produced. 'Włocławeks' came to be the standard decor for the social modernist apartment, becoming part of the 'folk' iconosphere of that period.
Antoni Buszek (1883–1954), painter, teacher and technologist, was known for introducing the 'Buszek method'. From 1901–1904 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. Following his studies he left for Paris, where he came across the program of Paul Poiret's École Martine. After his return, he joined up with the Krakow Workshops, where he ran a batik workshop he had organized in Paris. He then applied it to his own school in Warsaw in 1922, and again at his courses for the Association in Support of the Folk Industry in Warsaw from 1923–1925. At the International Exhibition of Decorative Art in Paris (1925) he received the Grand Prix and the gold medal for his teaching methods. In 1926 he founded the 'An-bu', a chemical agents and paints factory in Warsaw. After 1946 he organized courses for folk artists and decorators of faience products at factories in Włocławek and Koło. From 1951–1952 he lectured on ceramics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.
Author: Janusz Antos
Text originally published in Out of the Ordinary. Polish Designers of the 20th Century, edited by Czesława Frejlich and published by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute (Warsaw, 2011) in cooperation with the Karakter publishing house. Translation by Søren Gauger, edited for the purposes of Culture.pl by Agnieszka Le Nart.
For more information on the book, see: www.karakter.pl
Notes:
(1) A. Buszek, Ze wspomnień szkolnych o St. Wyspiańskim, 'Sztuki Piękne', VII, 1932, p. 296.
(2) W. Jastrzębowski, Geneza, program i wyniki działalności 'Warsztatów Krakowskich' i 'Ładu', 'Polska Sztuka Ludowa' 1952, no. 1, p. 18.
(3) M. Wisz [K. Witkiewicz and T. Szafran], Batik, pisanki na tkaninach. Wskazówki praktyczne, Krakow 1928, p. 7.
(4) S.I. Witkiewicz, Teoria Antoniego Buszka i pewne wątpliwości co do niej w kwestii odrodzenia sztuki czystej [in:] ibid., Nowe formy w malarstwie i inne pisma estetyczne, Warsaw 1959, pp. 243.
(5) R. Hankowska, Fajans włocławski, Wrocław 1991, p. 49.
(6) Quoted from: R. Hankowska, op.cit., p. 50.