The History of Kazimierz Dolny as an Artists' Colony
Given the rich selection of visual inspirations which readily translate themselves to canvas, it’s little wonder that Kazimierz Dolny developed into a popular destination for artists and earned itself a profile as a vibrant artist’s colony – a status it still holds today and has held almost continuously for over 100 years.
The mediaeval market town of Kazimierz Dolny in the Vistula river valley is a unique historic pearl that has largely managed to defy the mutable nature of time and effacing forces of modernity. It offers some of the most beautiful panoramas in Poland and an atmosphere that has kept artists enduringly enthralled with its charms for over a century.
The town's artistic appeal is as a result of both its natural and architectural compositions: from its verdant hillsides, network of gorges and panoramic views across fields, rivers and the town below, to its architectural wonders combining traces of mediaeval, Renaissance, the 16th and 17th century grain trade and Jewish histories.
Characteristic images are the quaint cobblestone streets which stretch in every direction from a mediaeval market square in whose centre stands an old wooden water well, while the impressive renaissance facade of the parish church looks down from a slight incline.
This image combines with a number of elaborate carved mannerist facades of wealthy merchant's townhouses, which stand alongside a plentiful array of characteristic white limestone buildings with red roofs and arched entrances. Elsewhere, wooden houses and granaries, the ruins of a castle, forested hillsides and spectacular hilltop views across the town and Vistula river stretching as far as the eye can see, complete the image of a bygone rural idyll.
The beginnings of an artistic allure
Though many consider the early 1920s as the start of Kazimierz Dolny's flourishing as an artists' colony, the foundation was already being laid in the 18th century, when, in 1792, it was discovered by Zygmunt Vogel. A court illustrator and painter to King Stanisław August Poniatowski, Vogel painted several panoramas of the town between 1792-1794, including ones of the market square and castle ruins.
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‘View of Kazimierz Dolny Market Square’ by Zygmunt Vogel, 1794, watercolour, 38.7 x 57.7 cm, The Print Room of the Warsaw University Library, photo: pinakoteka.zascianek.pl
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According to Dr Waldemar Odorowski in Kolonia Artystyczna w Kazimerzu Dolnym XIX – XXI w. (Artistic Colony in Kazimierz Dolny. Centuries 19th–21st), Vogel was the one who opened the doors to Kazimierz for artists, with many heeding his lead to explore the town as a source of artistic inspiration.
Kazimierz was seen by artists, first as an illustration of romantic reflections about a bygone greatness encapsulated in the contour of ruins and later as a special mix of colour, air and the spirit of a place uniquely conducive to art.
Waldemar Odorowski, trans. BK
The first artists who followed in Vogel's footsteps included Józef Richter, painter to the aristocratic Czartoryski family in Puławy, located a short distance from Kazimierz, and Jan Feliks Piwarski, who helped to establish a School of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 1844 and held the role of chair of drawing and landscape painting until 1848. Piwarski was significant in being the first to introduce Kazimierz Dolny to his students and was influential in promoting the practice of outdoor painting, also known as en plein air painting.
The tradition was continued by Piwarski's favourite student, renowned painter and co-founder of the Zachęta Fine Arts Society, Wojciech Gerson. Gerson also became a professor at the School of Fine Arts and organised outdoor landscape painting trips to Kazimierz Dolny for his own students in the 1870s and 80s, which were attended by the likes of Józef Brandt, Aleksander Gierymski and Józef Pankiewicz.
'Road in Kazimierz by the Vistula' by Józef Pankiewicz, 1890, oil on canvas, 56 x 45.5 cm, The Silesian Museum in Katowice photo: Muzeum Śląskie
Kazimierz Dolny would have a significant influence on some of these students, as in 1892, and fresh from a visit to Paris where he viewed paintings by Claude Monet, Józef Pankiewicz would produce a series of landscape paintings of Kazimierz in an impressionist style, the beginnings of Polish Impressionism.
Although Pankiewicz's paintings were themselves not very well received by critics, who were admittedly not very familiar with the style, they nonetheless served to draw attention to Kazimierz Dolny as a location for outdoor painting.
Other favourable circumstances in the second half of the 19th century also served to help make Kazimierz Dolny a destination of choice for artists and laid the foundations for it to become a true artists’ colony half a century later.
The first of these was the opening of a railway line between Warsaw and Puławy in 1877 and, three years later, the opening of the first hotel and restaurant in the town run by Aleksander and Bronisława Berens, later called the Hotel Polski.
The opening of hotels and restaurants where artists could meet and stay was a key moment in the development of a number of artists' colonies in Europe around the same time, such as the Hotel Julia in Pont-Aven, an international artists' colony that developed from the mid-19th century in Brittany in France and is often associated with the figure of painter Paul Gauguin.
As highlighted by Dr Waldemar Odorowski in a 2009 public lecture, entitled An Artists' Colony in Kazimierz Dolny – Myth or Reality?, another important element of the Kazimierz Dolny artists' colony, as with other art colonies in Europe, was the concept of a little homeland. Kazimierz Dolny fulfilled this concept, as artists who came once, often saw it as a home from home, returning every year or choosing to settle permanently.
Furthermore, artists' colonies were united by their attempt to create a kind of utopia, often, as with German artists' colonies, with roots in wild and virginal scenes of nature. They were sympathetic to a more traditional style of art, which stood in opposition to the later termed avant-garde arts movement. Kazimierz Dolny was consistent with these ideals.
From Pont-Aven to Kazimierz Dolny – laying the creative foundations
Whilst the School of Fine Art had already been established in Warsaw in 1844, the Warsaw School of Fine Arts as we know it today, was called into existence in 1904. A seminal moment in the history of Kazimierz Dolny as an artists' colony occurred five years later in 1909, when the painter Wojciech Ślewiński, working as a professor of the school at the time, took his students on an open air painting trip to Kazimierz Dolny (some considering this moment the official start of the town's artists' colony, though others view it as 1923).
Significantly, in taking his students to Kazimierz to paint, Ślewiński was drawing on his experience of another, already established European artists' colony at the time, the colony in Pont-Aven, France. Ślewiński had visited the French getaway in 1889, shortly after meeting Paul Gaugin in a café in Paris and becoming involved with the artists of the School of Pont-Aven.
In fact, due to it being an already established artists colony, popular from the 1850s, the town of Pont-Aven had already become crowded by 1888. Gaugin visited it for the second time that year and as a result, he found an alternative place to paint in the town of Le Pouldu, where Ślewiński also spent time alongside him.
In Kazimierz Dolny, Ślewiński found an equivalent to the artists' colony of Pont-Aven and Le Pouldou as well as the inspirations for what he wanted to teach about art. It was at this time that Kazimierz Dolny's townscape was for the first time embellished with the sight of young artists set up with their easels all over the town’s streets – a sight that came to cement itself as a characteristic feature of Kazimierz Dolny in the following decades, particularly between 1923-39, and is still a common view that greets visitors today, especially in the summer.
Slewinski's plein air session in Kazimierz Dolny made a powerful impact on his students. One of them, painter Zygmunt Kamiński, described it as follows:
My sensibility was immediately moved by the grace, differentness and charm of the town, its surroundings, the beauty of its architectural monuments, and I was particularly struck on the spot by some kind of difficult to more closely define, lyrical, full of elusive poetry – archaism of wholeness.
Trans. BK
The 1920s & a new Polish artists' colony is born
I know people who habitually eat breakfast in Warsaw, lunch in London, and dinner in Paris. But at night they always return to Kazimierz, because it is the town of their dreams.
'The Town of Our Dreams' by Anatole Stern, 1939
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Tadeusz Pruszkowski’s villa on the castle hill in Kazimierz Dolny which served as a studio and retreat for the students of his art colonies, photo: szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl
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While over a century of artists had slowly been discovering the creative inspirations of Kazimierz Dolny, and some consider 1909 the start of the artists' colony, it was not until the interwar years and specifically the year 1923, that most consider the beginning of the town's transformation into a fully-fledged artists' colony.
The catalyst was a group of artists connected with the Warsaw School of Fine Arts professor Tadeusz Pruszkowski, who first brought his students to the town on an outdoor painting trip in 1923 and initiated a tradition of doing so every year until 1939. The colonies organised by Pruszkowski were hosted at his own home, first a traditional wooden house and later an imposing villa (still standing today), which he had built for himself on the castle hill in Kazimierz Dolny and which served as a retreat and studio for the students of his colonies.
In 1925, Pruszkowski formed his own artistic group which went by the name of the Brotherhood of St Luke. The name alluded to the names of city guilds for painters and artists in mediaeval Europe and was also the name of one of the first artistic colonies in Europe, set up by a group of young painters from the Vienna Academy in 1809, who had based themselves in an abandoned monastery near Rome.
‘Landscape from Kazimierz’ by Antoni Michalak, 1924, oil on board, Vistula River Museum in Kazimierz Dolny, photo: Muzeum Nadwiślańskie w Kazimierzu Dolnym
Pruszkowski's Brotherhood of St Luke initially brought together nine artists, including the prominent names of Antoni Michalak, Bolesław Cybis and Jan Zamoyski. They would meet in Kazimierz Dolny to work in a spirit of artistic freedom and often collaboratively under their creative master Pruszkowski, whose personality was seminal in the success of the grouping.
In 1938, the group, by then composed of 11 artists, was commissioned to produce a series of seven paintings depicting the most important moments in Polish history to furnish the Hall of Honour at the Polish Pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair in New York.
During the time of the brotherhood’s existence, other young artists from other corners of Poland also began to flock to Kazimierz Dolny, keen to see what the pruszkowiaks (the students of Tadeusz Pruszkowski) saw in the place. It led to hundreds of young artists regularly visiting the town.
Artists came from all over the country, in greatest numbers from Warsaw, but also nearby Lublin, Łódź and Lwów (today's Lviv), sometimes also from Kraków. It was during this time that Kazimierz Dolny started to be associated with the sight of young artists setting up their easels in every nook and cranny of the picturesque town.
The Kazimierz Dolny artists' colony that emerged at this time was a phenomenon which was unparalleled. There were no true equivalents anywhere else in Poland.
Other artistic groups also formed and came to paint in Kazimierz, including groups by the names of the Warsaw School and Freepainting Lodge, the latter of which counted Feliks Topolski as one of its most famous members.
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‘A day in the sztetl’ by Szmul Wodnicki, circa 1930, photo: Kazimierz Confraternity of Art
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On account of the sizeable Jewish population, which was well over half the town in the 1920s and 1930s, a key feature of the artistic colonies at this time was the large number of Jewish artists, such as Chaim Goldberg.
For them, Kazimierz became the image of an almost perfect ‘sztetl’ – a small town, the real homeland of Polish Jews.
Waldemar Odorowski, trans. BK
Aside from paintings by Jewish artists, the town also served as a setting for many films with dialogues in Yiddish, the most famous of which was the 1937 film Dybbuk by Michał Waszyński, often considered the best Yiddish film in the history of cinema.
An important element was that the town felt like a haven. Art was always the most important thing and even with the rise in antisemitism in the 1930s, Jewish artists were able to feel freedom and focus on their art there, with questions of ethnicity never interfering in the creative process.
There were also no pre-conceived ideological ideas tied to Kazimierz Dolny as an artists' colony, the main drawing point for a visit to the town was simply panting the town itself.
Pruszkowski and other artists were also keen to help enliven and support the town in any way they could. For example, in 1925, Pruszkowski helped co-found the Society of the Friends of Kazimierz (Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Kazimierza), to which he invited members of the elites at the time who he felt could help influence the town's development. The art section of the society also organised exhibitions of the work of its members in 1932, 1934 and 1935 in the Cejlowska Townhouse.
The visits of the artists also served to attract tourists to the town as well as writers, poets and filmmakers, including Anatol Stern, Ewa Szelburg-Zarębina and Maria Kuncewiczowa. The latter fell in love with the town and built a house there in 1936, writing that, 'in Kazimierz, life seems a theatre, and the world decoration'.
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Zamek w Kazimierzu Dolnym, fot. Jakub Halun / Wikimedia Commons
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All together, the town became a retreat for all kinds of artists and not just painters. It was here that they organised balls and dances in the ruins of the castle and all sorts of other artistic events, meetings and soirees.
The Second World War brought the irreversible destruction of Jewish life in Kazimierz Dolny, but even during the Nazi German occupation, the town continued to attract painters such as Teresa Roszkowska, Wacław Wąsowicz and Eugeniusz Arct.
After the war, Kazimierz Dolny was quick to rebuild itself and an artists' colony was soon resurrected. In particular in the years 1949-1956, when the Soviet Union imposed the doctrine of socialist realism on artists and all art was subject to strict rules and guidelines, Kazimierz Dolny became a sort of refuge for artists, where they could cast aside the shackles of the state's prescriptive regulations.
It is testament to the creative freedom Kazimierz Dolny offered, that it was in the town that a group of young Warsaw artists sat down and came up with the idea for a radical new art exhibition which would move Polish art away from socialist realism. The fruits of that idea, conceived in Kazimierz, was the now legendary National Exhibition of Young Art held at the former Warsaw Arsenal building in 1955.
Overall, the years 1949-1956, were years of flourishing for the Kazimierz Dolny artists' colony, in which both artists and writers flocked to the town again just as they had done before the war.
This was followed by a period of greater quiet for just over a decade from 1956 to 1969, when Kazimierz Dolny experienced a slight lull in its fortunes as the eyes of artists turned towards Paris as an epicentre of art, and the town experienced a fall in its popularity as a consequence. Though artists still came, they came in smaller numbers and Kazimierz Dolny's status as an artists' colony seemed for a while to be in doubt, until, as was often the case with the town in the past, another artist stepped in to revive its fortunes and opened the way for others to follow.
That artist was Stanisław Jan Łazorek, who, in 1969, had the idea of exhibiting his artworks in Kazimierz Dolny's market square and begin selling them. This was a novelty at the time and Łazorek was the first to attempt it. Luckily for Kazimierz Dolny, the idea caught on like wildfire with other artists, who imitated the idea.
As a result, Kazimierz Dolny's market square was transformed into a giant open air gallery and a kind of art school. Soon, artists began to open their own art galleries in the town.
Keeping the artists' colony alive in the new millennium
Out of all the European artists colonies, Kazimierz Dolny is the only one to have maintained an almost uninterrupted continuity until the present day, still functioning as an artists' colony even during wars, political changes and evolving artistic fashions.
Today, there are at least eight private artists' galleries functioning in the town that organise regular exhibition openings, alongside the art exhibitions organised by the Vistula River Museum in Kazimierz Dolny, often from their extensive collections.
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Kazimierz Confraternity of Art, photo: Facebook
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Established in 2000, today the Kazimierz Confraternity of Art, which brings together several dozen artists, is the main group continuing the legacy of the artists who started coming to the town in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, helping to keep the colony alive in the present.
Its establishment, which was an attempt to unite the artistic diaspora, was also instrumental in getting Kazimierz Dolny recognition as an artists' colony on the European stage, when, also in the year 2000, the confraternity officially joined the European Federation of Artists' Colonies (euroart).
As part of euroart, in 2014, the confraternity organised the European Festival of Artists’ Colonies in Kazimierz Dolny and in 2019, hosted the Euroart General Meeting, which was accompanied by a conference and exhibition of works by confraternity artists. It was attended by over 50 representatives of artistic colonies from 25 European cities.
The event was the first in the history of Kazimierz Dolny in which all the artistic colonies of the Euroart network had a chance to spend time in the town and was seen as a mark of distinction and recognition of Kazimierz Dolny as a fully legitimate European artists' colony.
We don't want anyone to forget that an artists' colony is not just an idea, an artists' colony is not only a place, an artists' colony are its artists – it's from them that everything began and without them nothing would exist. Vice-president (2019) of the Kazimierz Confraternity of Art, Agnieszka Mitura, trans. BK
Written by Blanka Konopka, Nov 2021. Sources: Culture.pl; kazimierzdolny.pl; Kolonia Artystyczna w Kazimerzu Dolnym XIX – XXI w. (Artistic Colony in Kazimierz Dolny. Centuries 19th-21st.), Waldemar Odorowski; wkazimierzudolnym.pl; resources.library.lemoyne.edu; jewish-lodz.iu.edu.
