Creation of the world 1856

Curator: Here we have a work titled, “Creation of the World” made in 1856, a pencil drawing by Józef Simmler. Editor: My first impression is one of lightness and nascent energy. The figure almost seems to be emerging from the very paper, sketched so delicately, floating over a nascent world. Curator: Simmler’s work invokes the symbolic language of divine creation, the figure an archetype of a creator, seemingly gestating space itself. Think of the cultural memory around Genesis— the embodiment of cosmic creative power. Editor: And how this sense of emerging form is achieved through Simmler’s skillful use of line and tone. Note how the pencil work creates a soft modeling of the figure. He coaxes a sense of three-dimensionality from an essentially two-dimensional medium through strategic use of hatching. Curator: The subject and form tie together in potent iconography, evoking narratives of emergence and the dawn of existence present across multiple cultures. Editor: I find it interesting how the romantic-era impulse towards sublime themes manifests here in the simplicity of a pencil sketch. Simmler strips down the monumental, almost as a theoretical exercise. He investigates form through a deliberate act of artistic paring. Curator: Consider this within the wider context of Simmler's time. Perhaps the spareness of line echoes a move away from more didactic religious art, opting instead for a more intimate, contemplative interpretation of the divine act. Editor: In essence, the form, even incomplete as it appears, reinforces the meaning, evoking the still unformed, a becoming. It makes you feel as if we've entered a phase in-between artistic visions and creation as such. Curator: That’s a fitting observation to end on. "Creation of the World" offers an ongoing sense of generative process—in the art and the world it portrays. Editor: Indeed, Simmler delivers on both formal and conceptual ideas.