Author: admin

This artwork at the National Museum in Wrocław was painted by Ludwig Peter Kowalski (1891-1967) and I’m intrigued by this more in terms of the artist than this particular work. It is a stylistic view of the Italian city of Siena which is quite alluring, but it was painted in 1930 and this was at a time when nationalism was starting to increase across Germany. Kowalski had served in the German military during the First World War, but he studied in Italy and in 1927 he went to work at the Academy for Art and Crafts in Breslau (now known as the Polish city of Wrocław). His works were not liked by the new Nazi regime as they weren’t keen on the expressionist movement, he was tolerated for a short period before being dismissed in 1934. He was effectively forcibly moved in 1945 when the borders were changed and a couple of years later he went to live in Berlin for the rest of his life.

I might be alone in this, as I often have random flights of fancy about these matters, but there’s something in looking at an artwork painted nearly 100 years ago knowing that the artist couldn’t have possibly have predicted what would have happened to him. The city in which he worked would cease to be German, he would be fired from his job and forced to move elsewhere in the country, eventually securing some financial reward but likely struggling throughout the 1930s. That somehow all felt rather more imposing than the artwork in front of me. And it also reminded me that I haven’t been to Siena.

This painting is located in the National Museum in Wrocław and it rather intrigued me because it reminded me of the Herring Lassies (or Herring Girls) who used to work in Lowestoft from the mid nineteenth to mid twentieth centuries. In Lowestoft, they tended to work in threes with two of them gutting the herring, whilst the other packed it. Although it was a useful form of money, and some adventure, for the women, the working and living conditions were sub-optimal and I doubt that the conditions in the painting are much different.

It was painted by Franz Skarbina (1849-1910) who was a German artist who primarily painted images from his home city of Berlin and he tried to capture urban life. The artwork was painted in 1888 and although he was in Berlin that year, he had been travelling to Northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands in the years before that, which is from where I imagine the painting was inspired. There’s an interesting article at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy63lpy251zo about those who did the job in Scotland and it sounds tough to me.

Located in the National Museum in Wrocław, this painting is by Ambrosius Holbein (1494-1519), the brother of Hans Holbein the Younger of Tudor painting fame. The text at the top relates to Paul’s letters to the Corinthians in the New Testament and talks about God not needing the understanding of humans, as frankly, they don’t know as much as he does. I can think of a President who has a similar mindset, but I’d better divert into politics for too long. Anyway, given that this Holbein died young at the age of around 25, there aren’t a large number of artworks still surviving although the Kunstmuseum in Basel has several. This is also where he likely died (the city, not the specific art museum) and Basel is also where his brother worked for several years. The museum has this dated as 1522, but they note that Holbein died in 1521 (no-one is entirely sure when he died), so something might be slightly off here or it was just finished off by someone in his workshop.

The background blue colour is in other paintings by members of the Holbein family and it’s apparently called Azurite, a form of copper which was mined in the Saxony area at the time. I don’t have any art knowledge to add much here, but it’s a vibrant and bold painting but there’s no information provided at the gallery or on their web-site as to the provenance and where it has been located for hundreds of years. And it’s a reminder that I should look at going to Basel as I’ve just noticed that Wizz Air fly there.

I like a bit of colour with historic exhibits and this fresco dates to 79AD, or at least just a little before, when there was a little incident at Pompeii. Located at the National Museum in Wrocław, rather than being there in its own right it was more embedded in an exhibition entitled ‘Miracle Workers’ which was “intended as an exhibition which describes and presents the world made by human hands, which first was created in the human mind and imagination, and then in a perfect way materialised in the utilitarian objects.”

Having been to Pompeii, I’m aware that there is no shortage of frescoes from the site, but I’m still intrigued by the vibrancy of the colours and how they managed to be preserved under a heap of volcanic ash for so long. It has rather lost its context although Google Gemini has a go at working it out, telling me:

“The figure’s legs and the spiral object are difficult to interpret definitively without more context. However, the spiral object could be a stylised representation of a thyrsus, a staff associated with the Greek god Dionysus (Bacchus in Roman mythology). If so, this would suggest the figure is a follower of Dionysus, such as a maenad or satyr.”

I’ll go with that….