Today we’re escaping a gloomy fall afternoon with a visit to the colourful, extravagant world of Józef Mehoffer. Care to join us in our virtual art gallery?
Born in 1869 in what was then Austro-Hungary, Mehoffer studied art in Krakow, Vienna, and Paris. He led the Young Poland movement, a group of artists formed around the turn of the century in reaction to avant garde movements formed in other European countries. Starting in 1905 Mehoffer was a professor at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts. Training the young artists of Poland solidified his legacy as one of the country’s most influential artists of the twentieth century. During the Second World War he tried to escape with his family to Ukraine, before being taken to a Nazi concentration camp. He returned to Kraków in 1940 after the Vatican and the Italian Government petitioned for the family’s release. He was a symbolist, a modernist, and a highly original artist who deeply influenced the development of the art nouveau style.
Mehoffer was a technically skilled painted and a gifted portraitist in particular. What makes him stand out, however, is his eye, the way he arranged figures, objects, and landscape together to create swirling compositions you can gaze at for hours…
Take the spectacular Strange Garden, an almost surrealist scene in which a woman and two children walk through dappled light underneath a patch of apple trees. Garlands of flowers weave through the trunks and under an enormous dragonfly a nude child proudly carries two large flower stalks.
Mehoffer painted this work while on vacation with his family, and perfectly encapsulates, in his signature Symbolist style, a moment of familial bliss. He was adept at capturing melancholy also, like in this work, Spiewaczka:
As well as repose and the natural world…
And how perfect is this dual-portrait of dog and owner? Special kudos for the perfectly coordinated nails/dress/shoes/dog leash…
Another wonderful “woman and her dog(s)” painting:
His portraits, mostly of high-society women, are striking. Mehoffer manages to present intricately detailed, highly organised compositions that nevertheless feel intimate and naturalistic.
Antiquity was a great inspiration to Mehoffer, as it was to many Symbolist artists. Some of his portraits included mythological themes, either in the background of the composition…
Or in the very portrait itself!
Mehoffer also experimented with religious imagery, seen in these evocative works:
As if his paining didn’t keep him busy enough, Mehoffer worked in several other mediums as well, including etching, illustration, graphic art, furniture design, and stained glass.
He also designed sets for the theatre.
In an example of his mastery of yet another medium, Mehoffer transforms a simple watercolor sketch into a breathtaking depiction of daily life in Paris…
Even without figures his interiors are full of life. We see a chair someone has just gotten up from…
…or a watering pail set down in the hot summer sun.
Our favorite work of Mehoffer’s has to be Zinnias, a sort of inverted still life painting that also features a gorgeous nude study.
