Władysława Skoczylasa podróż do ZSRR

Dariusz Konstantynów

doi:10.36744/bhs.319

Władysław Skoczylas’s Trip to the USSR

Dariusz Konstantynów

d.konstantynow@ug.edu.pl
Instytut Historii Sztuki UG, Gdańsk (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2064-5677

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36744/bhs.319

Abstract

With the Soviet-Polish Non-Aggression Pact having been signed on 25 July 1932, there began a period of ‘rapprochement’ between the two countries, this resulting in e.g. a visit of a group of six Polish artists to Moscow and Leningrad (23 Nov. – 7 Dec. 1933). The group included: Władysław Jarocki, Władysław Skoczylas, Tadeusz Pruszkowski, Xawery Dunikowski, Władysław Daszewski, and Mieczysław Treter. Following the group’s return, it was only Władysław Skoczylas who publicly spoke about his impressions from the trip. He was most promptly associated with the Polish-Soviet ‘rapprochement’ in fine arts at the time: he most frequently spoke about art and organization of artistic life in the Soviet Union, he also actively participated in establishing relations with Soviet artists, and since he was a known and esteemed artist himself, also a President of the Institute of Art Propaganda, board member of the Society for Promoting Polish Art Abroad, and an active columnist affiliated with ‘Gazeta Polska’, an unofficial organ of the Polish government, his words resounded widely. The paper attempts to reconstruct the course of the visit of the Polish delegation, to analyse the report presented by Władysław Skoczylas in ‘Gazeta Polska’, as well as to answer the question why what he saw in the artistic life of the USSR was by him considered to have been one of the ‘strongest’ impressions he had had in the recent time. The encounter with Soviet art as well as becoming acquainted with the conditions in which Soviet artists lived and worked must have been an important experience for Władysław Skoczylas. In the Soviet Union he was able to see with his own eyes how the issues he himself had been considering as of the mid-1920s were solved, namely the mass character of art, its commitment to the life of the state and to the promotion of its ideology, functioning of the state and social patronage, organization of the artistic production and its sales, and finally the artists’ living conditions. Favourable interest with which he assessed what he saw during the visit to Moscow and Leningrad had by no means to do with his leftist inclinations. It resulted from Skoczylas’s deep conviction that the state, being the institution of the greatest potential and authority, also in the domain of art (particularly in the period of the deepest economic crisis) should take on the role of the main patron and client, providing artists with support, and treating them just like any other highly qualified specialist, while the artists should create art playing ‘a major role as a state-building factor’. The Soviet example illustrated what the implementation of the idea of art connected with the state and its ideology could look like, how art and the artists could benefit, yet it also showed the price of such an arrangement. Skoczylas does not provide an unequivocal answer to the question whether the price is worth paying. However, both his statements and the opinions voiced by representatives of other Polish artistic circle in the early 1930s suggest that they would be willing to incur the cost.

Supporting Agencies

Instytut Sztuki PAN

Keywords:

Skoczylas Władysław (1883-1934), Polska-ZSRR – kontakty kulturalne 1918-1939, Polska – mecenat artystyczny państwa 1918-1939

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