Artistic journeys led Wojciech Weiss to the Tatra Mountains, Podolia, Austria, Hungary, France, and Italy. It turned out, however, that it was in Strzyżów, a small town on the Vistula River, that he found the landscapes that inspired him and the people he painted. Weiss first came to Strzyżów in 1899, soon after his sister Emilia had moved into town. Emilia’s husband Stanisław Florek was the railway station master there. When travelling to visit his sister, the artist would use a convenient railway connection from Kraków – where he lived – to Rzeszów, and then farther on to Strzyżów. The railway station where the artist’s family lived, built in 1890 ca. 3 km from the market square, stood out from the town’s landscape; the railway line opened the same year was the most important factor in Strzyżów’s development.
When staying in Strzyżów (periodically between 1899 and 1903), Weiss lived in a room in the train station attic. Years later, the artist recalled: “I used to practice the violin in the attic of the station building […]. There were paintings on the easel: my sister with her husband, my son with toys, the other son outdoors, my brother-in-law resting after work, my old, sick mother sitting on the bed, some botched sketches, and a lot of landscape drafts” (Szkicownik Wojciecha Weissa, selected and edited by Aneri Irena Weissowa and Stanisław Weiss, Kraków 1976, p. 26). One of those drafts was precisely this sheet with two drawings in violet crayon: “Old Jewish Cemetery in Strzyżów” and “Building of the Railway Station in Strzyżów”.
The three drawings of the Jewish cemetery made by Weiss, held in the collection of POLIN Museum (MPOLIN-M, MPOLIN-M , MPOLIN-M), are compositions of great artistic interest, reflecting the atmosphere of the place, its continued existence, and symbolism. In the study “Old Jewish Cemetery in Strzyżów”, we see that “the vital means of expression is the line, softly defining shapes, vibrating ecstatically at times. It creates the contour of things and phenomena rather imagined than real – the contours of the imagination” (Ł. Kossowski, Pejzaże Wojciecha Weissa, exhibition catalogue, National Museum in Kielce, Kielce 1985, p. 15).
After the annihilation of the Jewish community of Strzyżów in the Holocaust and the destruction and devastation of local cemeteries, these drawings also became a document of history, a visual trace of the past. Other landscape studies from Strzyżów are held in the collection of the Zygmunt Leśniak Museum of the Strzyżów Region. You can read more about Strzyżów, its history, and community as well as Weiss’s visits and local inspirations in: Ilustrowany przewodnik po powiecie strzyżowskim na przełomie XIX i XX wieku. Perspektywa plenerów malarskich Wojciecha Weissa, ed. M. Bober, Strzyżów 2019 (https://www.muzeum-strzyzow.pl/uploads/4/9/1/9/49192843/przewodnik_2019_pl-en.pdf, accessed 19 September 2021); Młodopolskie fascynacje. Wojciech Weiss w Strzyżowie, ed. R. Weiss, Strzyżów 2020 (https://www.muzeum-strzyzow.pl/uploads/4/9/1/9/49192843/album_mlodopolskie_fascynacje.pdf [Accessed on 19 September 2021]).
Renata Piątkowska
