149.0 x 35.0cm - cast bronze, chiseled, patinated on the base a circular bronze maker's mark with the monogram IA and an inscription in the rim: ADAMART - IGOR ADAM - WARSAW and casting number 1/8.
Sculpture mentioned and reproduced:
- Janusz Drewojed, Maryla Lednicka-Szczytt, [in:] Słownik artystów polskich i obcych w Polsce działających: malarze, rzeźbiarze, graficy, T.5: Le-M, ed. J. Drewojed, Warsaw 1993, pp. 15-17;
- Magdalena Kasa, Among Angels and Saints - Evolution of Sculptural Forms in the Works of Maryla Lednicka-Szczytt, in Archives of Emigration [online], December 31, 2016, pp. 351-363, il. 13 [accessed 17 II 2023].
In turn, what most deeply satisfies my inner need - are religious themes. In working on them I find that mood of detachment from concrete things, a mood that gives me experiences that are most valuable.
Maria Lednicka-Szczytt, quoted in M. Kasa, Among the Angels..., p. 351.
"Undoubtedly the most famous Polish sculptor abroad," wrote the World in 1928 about Maria Lednicka-Szczytt. Twenty years later, after her tragic death, Irena Piotrowska stated that her name would go down in the history of Polish sculpture. As the artist's brother, Waclaw Lednicki, reported, when the young sculptor began studying in Antoine Bourdelle's studio in 1913, she became his favorite student within six months. Thereafter, Lednicka-Szczytt's career developed rapidly, with great success. She took a lively part in artistic life, including as an organizer of various events, and was friends with the Górski sisters Adrianna Górska de Montaut and Tamara Lempicka. She enjoyed favorable reviews, as well as recognition as a member of the Salon d'Automne or the Warsaw Zachęta.
The artist lived in Italy from 1924 to 1934. She created portraits and architectural sculptures in the spirit of interwar classicism. Restrained and far from both monumentalism and excessive expression and narrative, she had no propagandistic qualities, Katarzyna Nowakowska-Sito wrote about her work from the Italian period. The author further notes that: The leading lines of her work continued to be portraiture and - increasingly attracted to her - religious sculpture, which was connected with her fascination with Gothic and early Renaissance forms, which inclined to focused meditation (K. Nowakowska-Sito, Maria Lednicka-Szczytt - the career of a Polish sculptor in Italy, 1924-1934, "TECHNE. New Series" 2019, (3), p. 102).
Mystical-religious motifs will come to the fore more strongly in the last period of her work, when the artist moved to the United States. Here she created the composition Spirit of Meditation, about which Magdalena Kasa writes: The figure is shown in a long robe, from under which the right foot is slightly protruding. Lednicka returned here to the gesture known from her earlier works of elbow-bent hands and stiffly straightened palms. From the compositional point of view, this procedure gives the sculpture balance, but it can be read as a teaching gesture, and in this sense the work can be linked to the tradition of symbolic-didactic sculptures of Romanesque portals. The figure appears to have no gender, as do Lednicka's angels. It is not known whether the Spirit of Meditation was created on a church commission or was rather the result of the artist's personal vision. If so, this sculpture is Lednicka's last known work of a religious nature. In it, she returned to her earlier angels, emanating religiosity as a spiritual experience (M. Kasa, Among Angels..., p. 360).
Spirit of Meditation, a wood sculpture, is currently in the Museum in Newark, New Jersey. From the collection of the artist's brother, Waclaw Lednicki, comes her plaster model, which was used to cast the offered work.
Maria (Maryla) Lednicka-Szczytt (Moscow 1893 - New York 1947) - sculptor, pupil of Antoine Bourdelle. She was born into the family of Aleksander Lednicki, a political and social activist, one of the most important Polish politicians in Czarist Russia. She began her study of sculpture in 1912. Moscow under Vladimir Domogatsky, and from the following year she continued it in the Paris studio of Emile Antoine Bourdelle. The outbreak of World War I took her by surprise in Moscow, where she stayed for a while (for a time she did sculpture in a joint studio with Tadeusz Breyer). Later she went to London and Warsaw. In 1919 she returned to Paris, where she again took up studies with Bourdelle.
In 1920-1924 she exhibited at the Salon d'Autonme, and in 1928 was a member of the jury of the salon's sculpture section. Her work received critical acclaim from French critics. In the early 1920s, she began working with Adrianna Gorska (Adrienne Gorska), sister of Tamara Lempicka, with whom she designed fountains and small architecture, as well as the Lednicki family tombstone at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw (1923-1925). Around 1924 she moved to Italy, where she spent the next nine years. There she found patrons in the persons of Jadwiga and Józef Toeplitz. The Italian period is considered the best period of her work. At that time she created many portraits of personalities from the world of art, aristocracy and politics. In the 1930s she collaborated on the decoration of several Italian transatlantic liners. On board one of them, together with a group of decorators, she arrived on her maiden voyage to the United States in 1932. Interest in her work, numerous commissions and interesting proposals led Lednicka to settle in New York. She continued to create portraits there, but nevertheless began to lean more and more towards religious subjects. After the outbreak of World War II, she fell ill with depression. She died by suicide in 1947. The oeuvre, which brought the artist much success and considerable fame during her lifetime, became dispersed after her death. In the 1960s, a collection of archival materials was donated to the MNW collection by the artist's brother, Władysław, a literary historian. The artist's sculptures are in the collections of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Museum of Fine Arts Newark in New York.
Recently viewed
Please log in to see lots list
Favourites
Please log in to see lots list