The Musée d'Orsay devotes an exhibition to the Polish painter Józef Mehoffer (Ropczyce, 1869-Wadowice, 1946). The purpose of this exhibition, which is not a retrospective, is to present about thirty paintings, fresco sketches and stained glasses by the artist that belong to the period covered by the Musée d'Orsay. The French public has previously seen only one masterpiece of this stunning artist, The Strange Garden (Warsaw, National Museum), exhibited twice in Paris, at the Galeries Nationales du Grand-Palais, on the occasion of Symbolism in Europe (in 1976) and 1900 (in 2000). This exhibition fits quite naturally the museum policy, which hopes to present the production of foreign artists of the time, a policy inaugurated in 1996 with the exhibition devoted to the German painter Adolph Menzel.
As part of this undertaking, Polish art had already caught the attention of the public in 2000; when the work of the painter Jacek Malczewski (1854-1929), Mehoffer's elder by a few years, was shown. Both stand among the most remarkable personalities of the avant-garde that developed at the turn of the century calling itself "Young Poland", an appellation that signified their willingness to break from the heritage of the past from a pictorial point of view.
To this end, Mehoffer, disregarding the advice of his teacher Jan Matejko (1838-1893), director of the School of Fine Arts in Krakow, and a painter famous for his evocations of tragic and glorious episodes of Polish history, went to Paris in 1891. He remained in France until 1895 – this sojourn is represented in the exhibition by two pieces dated 1894 from the Poznán National Museum, Place Pigalle in Paris and Self-Portrait. This trip was preceded by a year of study in Vienna. In his lifetime, the reputation of the artist reached far beyond the borders of his country. He was awarded a gold medal for his outstanding participation to the Paris World Fair in 1900 and the Saint Louis World Fair in 1904. He was also a member of the Viennese Secession.
Despite this international celebrity, one should not overlook his militant action for the recognition of a national art. In 1897, Mehoffer was among the founders of the society Sztuka, which proclaimed the independence of Polish art and refused from then on to have their work exhibited abroad as part of Russian, Austrian or German sections.
It was in the field of monumental art that the artist's commitment found its most remarkable expression, as testify the impressive sketches (Krakow, National Museum and Poznán, National Museum) for the frescoes designed between 1901 and 1903 for such national monuments as the cathedrals in Wawel and Plock.
His activity as a decorator was dominated by an exceptional undertaking that was to stretch for nearly forty years: the execution, following an international competition won in 1895, of glass panels for thirteen windows of the Friburg cathedral (Switzerland). Their composition, rich and teeming, in which human figures mingle in an artificial intensely and luminously coloured decorative nature, follows Symbolism and Art Nouveau while paying homage to national traditions.
The same applies to easel paintings, not only in the themes - The Muse, 1904 (Krakow, National Museum) and Medusa, 1904 (Krakow, Jagellons University Museum)-, but also by a refusal of naturalism and the illusion of depth in favour of lines and colours.
This aspect is particularly striking in the admirable series of portraits the artist made of his wife, whether one considers full-length portraits or busts. Jawidga Mehoffer's elegant, sometimes hieratic silhouette, and the serene beauty of her face stand out, in a manner similar to that adopted by the artists of the Viennese Secession, against richly ornate backgrounds merging with the rich clothes in which the model's dresses are cut. Jadwiga appears yet again, wrapped in a changing and rustling piece of silk, contrasting with the blond nudity of her son, who, on a warm summer's day, indulges in the luxurious atmosphere tainted with surrealism of The Strange Garden, the enigmatic character of with is still unexplained.
