Nikifor
Source: www.lemko.org from Nikifor Museum in Krynica collection
In my blog posts so far, I shared with you various aspects of Polish culture - the language, cuisine, tourist attractions. Today I’d like to talk a bit about art, specifically about one particular figure who, while underestimated during his lifetime, is now considered to be one of the most prominent painters in his genre.
Epifaniusz Drowniak was born in 1895 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Poland), in the town of Krynica in southern Poland. Very little is known about his background, some even doubt his exact birthplace, and for a long time, nobody was sure what his real name was. Similarly, we don’t know a lot about his family - his father is unknown, his mother worked as a servant in Krynica and he was of Lemko origin (an ethnic group that inhabits an area spanning Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland). What we know for sure is that back in his day he wasn’t well-respected by the people around him - because of his speech and hearing impairment he was considered intellectually disabled and wasn’t treated seriously by his contemporaries.
Source: www.culture.pl from the collection of the Etnographic Museum of Krakow
Another certain thing about his life is his great passion for painting which he discovered sometime before the 1920’s. He was perhaps the most prolific painter in the world - he made tens of thousands of paintings(!), some estimate the number to be around 40.000! Unfortunately, some of these were destroyed or got lost over the years.
Source: www.culture.pl from the collection of the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow
Due to the extreme poverty in which he lived, he painted on various easily accessible materials - paper sheets, cardboard, scraps of paper glued together, chocolate boxes, etc. In order to save paper, sometimes he’d even paint on both sides of the sheet. Although he was selling his paintings for very cheap, not many people were interested in buying them, mostly because of their naïve style. The painter was using a limited colour palette and very often his works looked like they were made by a child.
He used to sign his paintings with different names, the most recurring one was Nikifor, and this is the name everybody uses when referring to him.
Nikifor’s paintings show mostly his surroundings - landscapes, the building of his town, self-portraits, etc. Art critics agree that while his style is considered naïve or even primitive (in Polish this style is called prymitywizm), his sketches demonstrated certain artistic sensibility and maturity, we can clearly observe that he was constantly perfecting perspective drawing. Another greatly appreciated aspect of his works is the choice of colour - each painting had at least three dominating colours, the combination of which was praised by the critics as “impeccable”.
The first time Nikifor was officially appreciated by a wider audience was perhaps in 1938 when an article was published praising his works. The painter was so proud of it that he was reportedly carrying around a copy of this article, showing it to anyone he’d meet. After the publication of the article, an art gallery purchased a number of his paintings and it could have been a perfect occasion for Nikifor to gain fame and escape poverty. However, WWII, which started a year later, effectively prevented him from organising exhibitions and selling more works.
As a representative of an ethnic minority, he was forcibly resettled several times after the war, but he always returned to Krynica - some even say that he walked hundreds of kilometres on foot. His persistence was noticed by the authorities who eventually allowed him to stay in his hometown. Between 1949 and 1961, several exhibitions were organised both in Poland and abroad. While thanks to these exhibitions and support from other local artists, Nikifor could finally feel that he was appreciated, the real fame came after the painter’s death, as is often the case. Nikifor died in a public nursing home in 1968. The fact that he couldn’t be successful during his lifetime was a combination of multiple factors - his poverty, his disability, others’ prejudice, the war and, perhaps above all, the style of his paintings that wasn’t understood by his contemporaries, who admired more ‘classical’ art.
Source: www.culture.pl
If you would like to learn more about Nikifor, there’s a great 2004 movie “Mój Nikifor”, where the painter is played by a great actress (yes! a woman!) Krystyna Feldman. If you’d like to have more direct contact with Nikifor’s art, you can visit Krynica-Zdrój - a town at the foot of Śnieżka (which I hope you remember from my post about Polish mountains). Krynica-Zdrój is a lovely spa town famous for its mineral waters. Nikifor museum in villa Romanówka hosts the largest collection of the painter’s works.
David, OLS Community Manager – Polish
Source: Wikimedia Commons