Nikifor’s work has characteristic thematic cycles but each painting is a separate work. Nikifor never painted two identical pictures. Paintings belonging to the same cycle may have been created even twenty or more years apart, so their exact dating is impossible. Only the dates of the paintings from the last years of his life can be accurately determined. The exhibition presents all the artistic techniques used by Nikifor and familiarises visitors with the most important thematic cycles of his work. The vast majority of Nikifor’s paintings are watercolours, including the inter-war period paintings that are considered his best works. In later years, Nikifor also used gouaches and crayons. Among his earliest outstanding paintings, probably dating from the years of the First World War, are military scenes. They depict the soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies giving reports, giving orders, and changing of the guards. Fantasy architecture and scenes in temple interiors stand out among the paintings from the 1920s and 1930s, which are considered to be of particular artistic value. The paintings conventionally called ‘Beskids landscapes with stations’ should be considered the pinnacle of Nikifor’s work.  No other painter has immortalised the Beskids so beautifully and with such passion. An eminent expert on painting, Associate Professor Jerzy Zanoziński, wrote in the catalogue of Nikifor’s exhibition at the Zachęta Gallery: ‘Today no one doubts anymore that Nikifor is a great and innovative discoverer of the beauty of the Krynica landscape, and the Carpathian landscape in general, with its gentle mountains covered with forest and chequered fields, with its wooden and stone Orthodox and Catholic churches, with its houses and villas in which elements of folklore live in a harmonious symbiosis with elements of Viennese-Cracowian Art Nouveau.’ Other outstanding series of paintings from the inter-war period include offices and dollar factories. In these compositions, Nikifor expressed his passion for painting architecture. In doing so, he was keen to correct reality, adding elements to the buildings that he felt were missing. This group of ‘construction’ compositions also includes various ‘KASA-BANKS’, post offices, and police stations. Kitchens are also a very interesting subject. This oft-repeated motif in images painted in the inter-war period certainly has its origin in the artist’s childhood, when Nikifor’s homeless mother and her child found a safe haven in the kitchens she worked in. A particular theme that runs through all periods of his work is the self-portrait. Nikifor was very fond of painting himself. He depicted himself as he wanted to be. In his paintings, he impersonates various important characters. He appears as an artist-painter at work, often under a colourful umbrella, an elegant and dignified man in a black suit, a menacing official in a uniform with epaulettes, and even as a bishop in liturgical robes. In the 1950s and 1960s, Nikifor also occasionally painted friends and visitors. Very interesting works from these years are the small format pictures depicting saints, bishops, churches and church flags. In the 1940s and later, many Krynica villas and guesthouses were built. Nikifor’s fondness for architecture and sacral subjects made him very keen on painting and drawing temples of various denominations, Catholic and Orthodox churches and synagogues. Although he was illiterate, Nikifor signed his paintings by redrawing the letters. He drew the letters in a single line along the bottom edge of a picture. These inscriptions do not form logical sentences. Usually, however, at least part of such a ‘caption’ actually refers to the content of the picture. When signing the paintings, he most often used the words: ‘NIKIFOR THE PAINTER – NIKIFOR THE ARTIST’. Sometimes, Nikifor marked some buildings with special symbols indicating their purpose, e.g., a dancing couple on the roof of a ballroom and synagogues crowned with a burning candle. Conservation considerations do not allow the same paintings to be displayed for a longer period of time. Sunlight and electric light have a damaging effect on watercolours despite the use of special ultraviolet protection glass. Among the exhibits in the display case, there is an original script for a documentary film about Nikifor, ‘Taki świat’ (‘Such a World’), directed by Tadeusz Stefanek (1968), and purchased and donated to the museum by Dr Irena Eris, as well as a commemorative medal awarded to Nikifor at the International Exhibition of Deaf People’s Art in Rome in 1957. Also on display are prints of poems about Nikifor by Zbigniew Herbert, Jerzy Harasymowicz, and Tadeusz Kubiak, among others.

Author: Zbigniew Wolanin, ethnographer, curator of the Nikifor Museum in Krynica-Zdrój.