you can get that film in gsa library! of course with english subtitles!
Also called Nikifor Krynicki, real name Epifaniusz Drowniak. Born 1895, died 1968 in Krynica. Considered one of the world's finest naïve (primitive) painters.
Nikifor was a Lemko after his mother. His father was a Pole; the legend has it that he was a recognized painter, code-named "T". Nikifor's mother raised him on her own, in extreme poverty and hardship, hiring herself out for various household jobs. He inherited from her a hearing and speech impediment. Orphaned during World War I and unable to communicate with people around him, he was initially treated by the population of Krynica as a misfit, was ridiculed and isolated physically and emotionally.
The origins of his name (or nickname) are unknown. He used it from his young years (its first version is supposed to have been Netyfor) and, for a long time, had no surname. For the occasion of the first exhibition of his works, mounted at the Warsaw Polish Architects' Association (SARP), he was named "Jan Nikifor", as immortalized by a poster. It was not until 1963 that he was officially given the surname "Krynicki" (and a flat from Krynica authorities), his administrative status finally resolved. In 2003 the local court in Muszyna resolved, however, that his true name was Epifaniusz (Epifan) Drowniak.
Likewise, it is unknown when he started to draw and paint. From the very start, however, he was clearly focused on the target he had set for himself: to be a painter, a Matejko from Krynica.
Nikifor was a local patriot: deported twice to a remote corner of Poland under the Akcja Wisla [the 1947 deportation of southeastern Poland's Ukrainian, Boyko and Lemko populations, carried out by the Polish Army], he stubbornly returned to his home town.
Many of Nikifor's earliest preserved works, dating from before 1920, reveal his effort to perfect his skills. Wrote Tadeusz Szczepanek:
"The majority of the preserved drawings are par excellence study sketches, with traces of erasing and correcting wrong lines. Nikifor strives to master convergent perspective, plots axes of symmetry, moves the crossing point of lines to other spots, tests his ability to use the frog and bird perspectives".
One gets the same impression browsing through Nikifor's sketch-book of sacred architecture. Dating from a few years later, it points to his particular inspiration - the Greek Catholic church. Indeed, many of his works are landscapes with a church outline in the background ("Cerkiew o zachodzie slonca / A Church at Sunset", 1920s.; "Biskup przed cerkwia / A Bishop in Front of the Church", ca. 1930; "Cerkiew w miasteczku / A Small-town Church", ca. 1962), a church interior ("Kapliczka / A Chapel", ca. 1930; "Ostatnia wieczerza / The Last Supper", undated), or a hieratic image of a saint ("Swiety Mikolaj / Saint Nicholas", 1920s; "Swiety na drodze / A Saint on the Road", before 1956). These are supplemented by secular themes: numerous Krynica landscapes ("Krynica - Pijalnia / Krynica. The Pump Room", 1930s; Willa "Zacheta" / Villa "Zacheta", Willa "Rusałeczka" / Villa "Rusałeczka", "Budynek Przedsiebiorstwa Ogrodniczego / The Building of the Gardening Company", all from 1940-45; "Niebieska Willa / A Blue Villa", 1950-55; "Kościół w Krynicy / The Church in Krynica", before 1962), as well as less numerous Cracow landscapes ("Krakow - Kosciol Mariacki / Krakow. St Mary's Church", 1964-66) and Warsaw landscapes ("Pejzaz miejski - Warszawa / A City Landscape - Warsaw", 1965), views of architecture ("Fragment architektury miejskiej / A View of Town Architecture", 1930) - some of them pure fantasies ("Brama fantastyczna / A Fantastic Gate", undated.), interiors ("U fryzjera / At the Barber's" , "U Krawca / At the Tailor's", "Trafika / The Newsagent's", all from 1930s), railway stations and railway tracks winding through the hills, Nikifor's particular fascination ("Tory kolejowe / Railway Tracks", "Stacja Bihcz / Bihcz Station", "Krajobraz z mostem kolejowym / Landscape with A Railway Bridge", 1930s), mountain views ("Drewniany domek na tle pól / A Wooden House in the Fields", 1940-45; "Pejzaz gorski z wsia / A Mountain landscape with a Village", "Pejzaż z rzeką / A Landscape with a River", both before 1956). Nikifor also liked to portray acquaintances and passers-by ("Na przechadzce / Taking a Walk", 1920s.; "Portret mezczyzny w plaszczu i z laska / A Portrait of a Man in a Coat with a Walking Stick", 1950-53), and, even more so, himself. His numerous self-portraits are most interesting. Painted chiefly in the 1930s, they reveal his self-awareness and the awareness of his position as well as his vision of himself and his aspirations (he liked being photographed, too). He would depict himself as engrossed in thought, sitting under the trees, dressed up, sitting by the easel, having a meal, his hand raised in a blessing gesture, standing behind the altar ("Nikifor w peruce / Nikifor Wearing a Wig", "Nikifor nauczajacy / Nikifor Teaching") or in a church niche ("Nikifor biskup / Nikifor the Bishop"), or at the church entrance ("Nikifor rozsylajacy uczniow / Nikifor Sending Out Disciples"). Many of the works bear clumsy though legible inscriptions such as "Painter" or "A keepsake of Krynica".
Regardless of the theme, the dimensions of Nikifor's works are small, often not much larger than a copybook sheet. Initially he would use the scraps he was given: Austrian office forms, used school copybooks, chocolate wrappers, cigarette boxes, wrapping paper. Poverty and the resulting thrift made him make double-sided pictures ("Chrystus nauczający - Chrystus błogosławiący / Christ Teaching - Christ Blessing", "Święta Barbara - Kapliczka / St Barbara - A Chapel", "Święta Weronika - Chrystus w Świątyni / St Veronica - Christ in The Temple", ca. 1920).
Nikifor liked to paint watercolours, sometimes combining them with tempera or oils. In his last years he also used crayons. The plastic strength of his works is, however, the result of transcending all limitations. Even when using small format, he was able to produce monumental images through a central composition with a distinct, frontal view - on the axis of symmetry - of the vertical rectangle of a human shape, a building, or a mountain. He would often frame his landscapes, scenes or portraits in an ornamental bordure ("Święci na drodze / Saints on the Road", before 1956). He carefully outlined each element with a thin black line, filling them with vivid colours applied straight from the tube. He made paints lose their raw nature. His innate and inspired approach produced a richness of nuances. He was able to achieve a fullness of colour or a fullness of shades of one colour. What is more, he was able to evoke moods with his palette - most often those of nostalgia.
Experts say that the finest of Nikifor's several dozen thousand works date from the 1920s and 1930s, the time by which he had defined both his preferred themes and esthetics. He gave away or sold for pennies many of his works at the time of greatest poverty. His talent was discovered by the Ukrainian painter Roman Turyn. The first collector of Nikifor's watercolours, Turyn gathered almost two hundred of them. While in Paris, he showed them to members of the Komitet Paryski (Paris Committee - later abbreviated to "Capists"), with whom he was friends. The Capists were impressed, and endeavoured to hold Nikifor's solo exhibition in Paris, but were not successful. However, some of his "little pictures" were included in the group exhibition of the Lvov and École de Paris painters, organized by the Ukrainian National Museum in Lvov in 1932. The Capists' appreciation for Nikifor's works was thus expressed by Jerzy Wolff, their advocate and author of the first publication on the Krynica-born self-taught artist ("Arkady" 1938, no 3):
"Me and my friend first came to know this [Nikifor's] art in Paris a couple of years ago. This first contact was ravishing. I still remember the moment when I first stood in front of these little watercolours in Jan Cybis's atelier. Awe still fills me. I was struck by the unusual maturity and ... distinctness of these works. ... Over the centuries countless pieces of canvas and board had been painted over, yet these scraps of paper were unlike ... anything I had seen. ... These little pictures are as simple as nature, and their uniqueness lies solely in reality being seen in earnest with eyes different from everybody else's ... Comparable to absolute pitch, Nikifor's absolute sensitivity to colour reflects ... our own painting dreams...".
Wolff went on to say that Nikifor
"... always works in ranges, every picture of his including at least three colour combinations; these are very strange and at the same time unerring. Their strangeness comes from his abstract painting approach, yet this abstractness has nothing to do with the unreal. His world is always perfectly real. However, there is the necessary separation from the object so that it can be created through painting".
To Nikifor, Wolff's text was a kind of a diploma; he treated it as a certificate allowing him to practise painting, and showed it to strangers and to Krynica tourists. However, he continued to lead a secluded and poor life, few people buying works from an unknown painter. In a 1950s begging letter he asked for "a piece of canvas or some food or money", offering his "little picture" for sale at a poignant price of "very little, just enough to live on". It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that he started to grow in artistic stature following his re-discovery by the couple Ella and Andrzej Banach. Andrzej Banach's first book on Nikifor, titled "Nikifor, mistrz z Krynicy / Nikifor, the Master from Krynica", was published in 1957 and was followed by other books and articles by the couple. The Banachs organized his exhibitions, visited, invited and looked after him, helping him to overcome the hardships of daily life. They described their friendship and efforts to build Nikifor's fame in "Historia o Nikiforze / The Story of Nikifor" (latest edition 2004). In the early 1960s Nikifor found a daily companion and dedicated caretaker in Marian Włosiński, the painter who died recently. Wlosinski, who would become Nikifor's legal custodian, sacrificed his art and his life to Nikifor, whom he believed to be a genius. The story of this unusual friendship is told in Krzysztof Krauze's feature "Mój Nikifor / My Nikifor", starring Krystyna Feldman in the brilliant title role. The film's 2004 premiere aroused a new interest in Nikifor, resulting in several exhibitions and the reissue of certain publications on the artist and his work, most notably the aforementioned "Historia o Nikiforze" and "Nikifor" by the same author (first published 1984, reissued 2004). The last years also saw a publication of a book of Nikifor's works with an introduction by Andrzej Oseka ("Nikifor", 2000). For many years Nikifor's art was also actively promoted by Aleksander Jackowski, the indefatigable researcher of Polish "naïve" art.
The story of Nikifor's fame spans a number of exhibitions, from the first solo one in Poland in 1949 to a series of foreign events in the late 1950s (Paris, Dina Vierna's galery; Amsterdam; Brussels; Liege, 1959, in which critics compared Nikifor to Henri Rousseau) and in the 1960s (Haifa, 1960; Vienna, Baden-Baden, Frankfurt am Main, Hannover, 1961). His first retrospective exhibit was mounted in the Warsaw "Zacheta" in 1967, while the last one was held at the Warsaw Ethnographical Museum in 2004. The Nikifor Museum, a branch of the Nowy Sacz Regional Museum, opened in the Krynica "Romanowka" villa in 1995. In early 2005 the local Lemko community announced the intention to erect the artist's monument.
A testimony to the powerful impact of Nikifor's "little pictures" is the change which occurred in the art of Edward Dwurnik, an artist of an established reputation.. Influenced by Nikifor's work, he changed the poetics of his art, most significantly by employing the characteristic black line. Says Dwurnik:
"I have never experienced stronger emotions that those aroused by his paintings when seen directly. I first saw them ... in 1965 ... He was a consummate, great, profound painter, he approached painting like the Renaissance masters, in a classical, honest way. ... Everything he painted had been SEEN. What had been seen was then shuffled freely in his memory and imagination. He was perfect at freeing himself from the constraints of reality and created a vision, a world, his own structure. He told his story, painted his universe."
Author: Małgorzata Kitowska-Łysiak, Art History Institute of the Catholic University of Lublin, February 2005
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