Wooden Architecture of Małopolska in the Graphic Arts of the Years 1918-1939

Dominating the landscape of Małopolska over centuries, the wooden architecture was not deemed to be interesting for many years, although it was an indispensable element of the cultural landscape of the region. As late as in the 19th century, artists going out and searching for picturesque background for genre scenes noticed whitewash houses, round domes of orthodox churches and towers of Roman Catholic churches. Works discussing the topic of wooden architecture in the years 1918-1939 may be divided into two groups – works aiming at possibly close presentation of the reality and those where wooden architecture has been treated as a cultural framework for e.g. scenes presenting folk customs, but without any attempt to make buildings more individual. Wooden architecture had a strong influence on the works of Jan Kanty Gumowski, Józef Pieniążek, Janina Nowotnowa. Formally processed, it is present in the works of Józef Kluska-Stawowski, Tadeusz Kulisiewicz, Bogna Krasnodębska-Gardowska and others. More unrealistic, almost as an ideogram, it has been used in works of a wide range of artists whose master was Władysław Skoczylas. The topic of folk customs, and, as a consequence, of wooden architecture, was often used in the works of Stanisław Ostoja-Chrostowski, Jan Wojnarski or Edmund Bartłomiejczyk. Artists were most interested in Podhale, submontane areas and wooden architecture of the region, but other regions of Małopolska also had their admirers. In the interwar period, graphics lost their former documentary significance, but it does not mean that monument experts should loss their interested in them. It often presents a world which does not exist. It is also a proof of the interest in wooden architecture, its sophisticated and, at the same time, archaic form