1869 -1907 · Krakow, Young Poland and total art

Vibrant pastels, monumental stained glass windows and visions of Krakow make Stanisław Wyspiaÿnski one of the most inventive figures of Polish modernity.

Stanisław Wyspiaÿski was born in Krakow in 1869 and died in 1907. Son of a sculptor based at the foot of Wawel, he grew up in a city whose history, churches and legends lastingly nourished his imagination. He studied at the Krakow School of Fine Arts with Jan Matejko and participated in the sets of St. Mary's Church, then traveled across Europe and stayed in Paris. Painter, pastellist, designer, playwright, poet, scenographer and furniture designer, he embodies the ideal of total art within the Young Poland movement. His portraits capture children, friends and the artist himself with a nervous line and an immediately expressive color. Little girl extinguishing a candle transforms a domestic scene into a study of light and attention. Planty Park with a View of Wawel Castle makes the Kracovian landscape a space of national memory. His projects of polychromies and stained glass windows for the Franciscan church, including God the Father, unite Gothic structure, plant energy and modern symbolism. This same force animates his theater, notably Les Noces, where history, society and myth meet. Wyspiaransski did not separate the arts: he sought a form capable of simultaneously engaging the body, space, memory and collective life. The selection "Stanisław Wyspiaransski" notably compared God the Father, stained glass project and Planty Park with a View of Wawel Castle. His reading favors light.

Wyspiaÿski transforms Krakow into a living organism: faces, plants, stained glass windows and monuments breathe to the rhythm of the same modernity.