Seascapes
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The seaside was not only a popular destination for summer holiday, but also a great theme for painters. Initially, in the first half of the 19th century, the sea constituted the background of historical scenes, disasters or sea battles, so popular among the artists. With time, however, it began to regain autonomy and became the primary motif and a spectacular painting theme. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the sea with its resorts – which included, among others, Połąga, the so-called 'Baltic Zakopane' – became a pretext for symbolic reflections on decadence, melancholy, sense of life and the pursuit of freedom. The artists acknowledged the power of the sea and the element of water, so important during the 'Young Poland' period.
Poland's reclamation of independence turned the Polish coast into the 'centre of the world', similarly to Zakopane in the mid-nineteenth century. Not only did the artists come here for open-air painting sessions or vacation, but they also settled here permanently.
Text: Urszula Kozakowska-Zaucha – art historian, head of the Department of Modern Polish Painting and Sculpture at the NMK -
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