Roszkowska began her artistic education as a middle school student, taking drawing lessons from Władysław Galimski. After moving with to Warsaw with her family, she continued her classes in Rychterski’s drawing school. Between 1924 and 1928 she was a student at the Fine Arts Academy under Tadeusz Pruszkowski, simultaneously taking classes at the Warsaw Conservatory (now the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music). In 1929 she joined the Warsaw School (an artist’s group led by Pruszkowski) and participated in all of their exhibitions in Poland and abroad. Between 1934 and 1936 she studied scenography at the State Institute of Theatrical Arts, and since the early 1930s, travelled a lot to France and Italy in order to pain on location. Just like many artists in Tadeusz Pruszkowski’s circle, she found irresistible painting motifs in Kazimierz by the Wisła river. After World War II she became fascinated with Szlembark – a picturesque town in the mountain region of Podhale. Her works were exhibited at the Institute of Art Propaganda and Blok Zawodowych Artystów Plastyków (editor’s translation: Coalition of Professional Artists).
Since 1935, Roszkowska also designed stage decorations and costumes, working with the Polish Theatre and New Ateneum Theatre in Warsaw and the New Theatre in Łódź. She developed her own scenography style – highly theatrical and far from imitating reality. She was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Exposition in 1937 for her work in Baśń krakowska (editor’s translation: A Kraków Tale), a ballet choreographed by Barbara Niżyńska. During World War II she designed the interiors of Warsaw bars – Błękitny and Gong. Her individual exhibitions took place in Paris in Galerie Editions Bonaparte (1930/1931), in London at the Polish Cultural Institute (1960) and the Warsaw Zachęta Gallery (1968). In 1948 Roszkowska took part in an exposition of the Powiśle art group, cultivating the tradition of Tadeusz Pruszkowski. In 1983 the Zachęta National Gallery of Art organised a retrospective presentation of the artist’s works.
What made the biggest impact on Roszkowska as an artist were Pruszkowski’s aesthetic conceptions based on depictions by Italian renaissance artists and 17th century Dutch painters. While still a student, she started to paint with tempera, which in a way fashioned her entire style. In line with the Warsaw School’s programme, she strived for technical perfection, imitating the methods of medieval and renaissance painting craftsmanship. What’s typical of the panoramas from Kazimierz and Szlębark is their spaciousness captured from a high distance, whose delusional depth is built by overlapping compositional plans. Roszkowska was even inspired by primitive art – a 15th and 16th century stylization is visible in her grotesquely pictured silhouettes, bringing to mind works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Karuzela, 1933; Sielanka, 1936). The polychromatic surface of the painting is made of small, dense brush strokes; the matte colours are revived by various texture effects (Street in Naples, 1936). The scenes filled with small human figures are usually livened by a subtle narration, humorous anecdote or simultaneous events (like in Buegel’s paintings), such as episodes from markets, village fairs, picnics and hunting (Polowanie, 1931). The simplification and deformation of shapes becomes grotesque, and shows a notion of mockery or gives the work a lyric tone (Kołysanka, 1938). The decorative still lives with intricate details and lavish flowers in vases show direct inspirations from 17th century Dutch masters.
Article originally written in Polish by Irena Kossowska, Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Aug 2002, translated by WF, Dec 2017