Stanislaw Przybyszewski 2002

Curator: This is Edvard Munch's striking portrait of Stanislaw Przybyszewski, created in 2002 using drawing. Editor: Oh, hello there, intense eyes. There's a raw, almost haunted quality to this sketch. It feels like the sitter’s very soul is being laid bare. Curator: Absolutely. Munch’s portrait, rooted in Expressionism, is charged with raw emotional energy, even conveyed through such simple lines. He zeroes in on the psychological state. Editor: The lines themselves are so direct, almost violently so. The contrast between the dark lines and the almost gentle expression... it's fascinating, even unnerving. The German Expressionist element really hits home. Is it line as feeling? Curator: Expressionist art saw the individual's subjective experience and the anxieties of the modern world. And yes, his application of line embodies that exactly—raw, unfiltered emotion transferred directly onto the paper. The style shows much kinship to Munch’s The Scream and his general concern with intense emotion. Editor: Thinking about symbols in general, do you think he emphasized these qualities, this soul-bearing, so much due to who Przybyszewski was in life, this infamous rebel spirit, his lifestyle, his association to Satanism? Curator: It's possible, if you are to assume Przybyszewski to be, on some level, a cultural figure associated to a broader philosophical tradition. I think it depends on how much we want to connect Przybyszewski as a person, who led a quite tumultuous and controversial life, to Munch as an artist seeking an external motif for exploring interior states of feelings through form, color, and line. What matters is the sheer emotive power in the finished portrait itself. It becomes almost universally symbolic for inner turmoil, angst. Editor: Maybe you're right. It all simmers beneath the surface, and there’s a sense of suppressed anxiety...or perhaps, simply a sense of resignation. What do you think? Curator: It’s powerful how he distilled so much depth into this portrait with such apparent simplicity, offering a raw emotional glimpse into the turn of the 20th Century, where there was a growing emphasis on inner feelings and raw sentiment in an era otherwise concerned with cold, impersonal mechanization. Editor: Right, the old against the new... and made real by Edvard. Another piece where I find myself seeing right into another’s interior life. Thanks!