Henryk Gotlib

In a 1962 letter, sent from South Godstone in Surrey, Henryk Gotlib writes to Ruth Borchard: 'I found a self-portrait painted between 1955-6. I had forgotten it all together - I do not know how - it is a good work.' He then goes on to give lengthy directions for the journey by bus from Reigate, where Ruth lived, to Godstone Green.

The 1988 retrospective exhibition at the Boundary Gallery, London - run by its Director Agi Katz (previously Curator at the Ben Uri Gallery, London) - 'Henryk Gotlib 1890-1966. A European Master' (which included some of his early drawings, once assumed destroyed, which turned up in a Cracow attic a few years after his death) - was most aptly titled. His richly impastoed oil painting has roots in French painting, perhaps notably Gauguin, the Pointillistes and Bonnard, and in the Expressionism of Corinth, Kokoschka, Soutine and others - but influences on his work always remain tantalisingly subtle and elusive, impossible to pin down conclusively. He was true always to what in 1929 he called 'the original vision [...] the subject of the first dazzlement'.

This self-portrait shows a man of distinctive sculpted contours, resolute identity and serious mien, who is yet deliciously immersed in nature (rather as in Cézanne's late outdoor portraits of The Gardener Vallier, in which filaments of colour in the figure's body and face echo those in the sky and foliage). The artist's posture is oddly asymmetric: his left, almost sparring arm extends forward, and is iridescent in the sunlight; his right side, in the shadows, slopes and tugs downwards. His quite pugilistic gait suggests that he may be out walking vigorously, keenly enjoying the woodland air. Background shapes suggest the form of a dense green tree (painted with lush fluidity so as to appear as a quite dynamic entity). Further striations of vibrant red, yellow, blue and green may evoke contours and layers of hilly landscape. The right hand band of the picture is taken up by the sturdy form of a tall tree trunk, glowingly accented towards its base.

Though a close look indicates that the artist is fully clothed (at least as suggested by the ruffled material around and below his neck – possibly a neckerchief or even a collar and tie), for all intents and purposes he might as well not be. It is his bodily presence that is painted, not his clothed outward form. His extended arm, left shoulder and breast below appear markedly sinewy, their irradiated flesh almost hallucinatorily pink and green. The abbreviated dark lines and marks for his right eye, eyebrows, mouth and contours of his chin - as well as dense, meandering brushstrokes summoning up his thick, attractively unkempt hair - are applied with an attuned spontaneity that only the most adept artist can achieve. The puce and green patches down the right side of his face indicate shadow.

The picture's complex framework is composed of swathes of quite feathery brushstrokes, highly varied in nature and daring in their use of radically harmonising brushstrokes. The result is that leaves, bark, human flesh, hair and apparent clothing all seem to be dazzlingly inter-connected– yet without sacrificing their distinctive qualities.

Here, as in all Gotlib's best works, 'realism and mysticism' are inseparable. As he wrote in a late 1950s book review: 'To copy life is not yet art. However, painting or sculpture which is not based on the observation of nature, man [...] and reality, floats in a void and degenerates into decoration. In art, therefore, there must be both realism and mysticism.'

This self-portrait can be seen to relate intimately to his c.1942 self-portrait, Henryk Gotlib, sculpted in plaster (Collection National Portrait Gallery, London, given in 2003 by Anne Dockery with support from the artist's widow, Janet Gotlib (1911-2001)). The ascetic look on the face, with soulful, deep-gouged eyes, is similar to that in the self-portrait picture acquired by Ruth. However, the artist's stance differs insofar as the artist stands more erect here – and it is the right hand (not his left) which is upraised, and not so much clenched into a tight fist as appearing to show long yet sturdy fingers stretching and curling out, disconcertingly ruddy, even bloody-looking, in hue. In contrast to the c.1955-56 self-portrait, the other hand is visible here: a taut, relatively miniscule ball of flesh and sinew. Gotlib's head and unclothed torso and arms, are modelled here with a sinewy asperity, and appear as though carved out of wood. The lower body – from the stomach downwards to the middle thighs – – resembles a tree trunk, the skin (coloured mauve with striations of red) having the texture of bark. As in the self-portrait painting, Gotlib appears as some kind of semi-arboreal human form, a vigorous male figure melding with wider nature.

Born in Cracow in 1890 into an affluent, middle-class Jewish family, Gotlib studied, before the First World War, at art schools in Cracow, Vienna and Munich, living in France for much of the 1920s, returning periodically to Poland, and exhibiting there as well as in Berlin, Brussels and Stockholm. His first one-man show was in Warsaw in 1918; he soon became a leading member of the Polish Formist movement. He spent long periods living in Italy, Greece and Spain during the 1930s. Visiting London in 1938, he met Janet Marcham whom he married six weeks later in Paris. In Cornwall for three months in 1939, he found himself unable to return to Poland when war broke out, and went on to live in Britain for the rest of his life

In an essay, 'Janet's Story', his widow evocatively recalled how she first met Henryk, and their early, eventful years together: 'At the time we married, Henryk was forty-eight years old whilst I was within one month of my twenty-seventh birthday. I remember so well the moment I first set eyes on my future husband[at] a party given by Feliks Topolski [q.v.] for Jozef Retinger [the distinguished Polish political adviser, who was 'later General Sikorski's aide-de-camp in the Polish government-in-exile', and who after the War worked 'with Churchill on his project for the Federation of Europe']. Topolski had but recently arrived in London and was already attracting attention [...] As the door of the flat opened I caught sight of Jozef engaged in conversation with a man who was standing in profile, dark, not very tall but erect, slight, but with broad shoulders. His face was that of an ascetic; yet at the same time the twinkle in his eyes told one that here was a man who was warm and human, and capable of enjoying the pleasures that life has to offer. The stranger was talking animatedly, using his hands as continentals do to emphasise points [...] Poor Henryk, he had been finding the party rather tedious – he spoke no English and apart from a few Poles most of those present were English. But Janet spoke French! This fact was to change the whole of both of our lives [...] I remember we sat talking until the early hours of the morning [...]. We arranged to meet the following evening at the Café Royal, still in those days a meeting place for artists and writers. Henryk had made up his mind to ask me to marry him.'

Janet describes the happy two weeks she spent with Henryk in Paris in May 1938, visiting 'the Sainte Chapelle, Chartres, the Louvre. He showed me his favourite pictures: Rembrandt, Vermeer [...], Cézanne, Titian, Bonnard, Chardin and Delacroix, Goya, Velàzquez [...] I recall how movingly he spoke about Rembrandt's Saul and David, and he pointed out how Saul held a corner of a curtain to his eye to wipe away a tear [...]  He spoke of Rembrandt with an almost religious feeling [...] We walked about the streets of Paris, hand in hand. I met his friends – [Zdislaw] Ruszkowski [1907-1991], [Sygmunt (Sigmund)] Menkes [1896-1986] and Jacek Zulawski [1907-1986; cousin of Marek Zulawski] all painters, [...] I remember visiting [Moise] Kisling [1891-1953] in his studio, so tidy with all his works neatly stacked on shelves. I did not mind at all that we were to be married in a mairie [town hall] – in Saint-Germain-des-Prés [...] Jozef Retinger had borrowed not only the money for the fare from London to Paris, but also a coat from Feliks Topolski, so as to be able to be with us on the 4th June 1938, our wedding day. Jacek Zulawski and his wife came [...] It was a very brief ceremony.

'At the beginning of July, we left Paris by train for Warsaw [...] On arrival [...] we took a doroszka (horse drawn cab) to Henryk‟s studio. This was in the centre of Warsaw [For about two or three years] from the time he returned from France in 1934, he had lived in Cracow [...] There was a strong avant-garde movement in Cracow, especially in the theatre, with which Henryk was actively connected [...] But, following the advice of the mayor [after Gotlib had attended a conference of anti-government intellectuals and artists], Henryk left Cracow, which he loved [...] and went to Warsaw.'

The couple then moved into Henryk's studio, with 'several easels, and pictures everywhere, stacked against the wall', and quite rudimentary living conditions [...] Gradually, I met Henryk's friends in Warsaw [painters such as   Kazimierz Tomorowicz (1897-1961) and the poet Alexsander Wat (1900-1867), one of the most significant 20th century Polish writers].Another friend of Henryk's was a solicitor named Friedecker, a patron of the arts and a friend of many artists in Warsaw. Without doubt he perished in one of Hitler's concentration camps. (There is a photo of Henryk, Friedecker and me sitting in a café in Warsaw.)

'We obviously could not stay long in Henryk's studio, and after about three weeks, we left for Cracow, where we stayed with Henryk's brother Gabryk, who had a large, beautiful flat overlooking the Vistula [...] Henryk's background is strikingly similar to that of Cézanne; their fathers were bankers and both disappointed their fathers by becoming painters and not carrying on the good work in the bank. And, strangely enough, both were forced by their fathers to study law.

'After just a few days in Cracow, we left for the Tatra Mountains, where Henryk decided we should stay for two months, so that he could paint “from nature”. Later he turned away from this way of working, preferring to rely on dozens of sketches and his memory of colour when he returned to his studio.

'We spent two very happy months in this little hotel [in Zakopane, the main resort on the Tatra Mounatins]. We were not alone, for many of Henryk‟s friends were also in Zakopane for the summer [writers, painters and musicians] Our time was spent walking in the mountains, short walks in the countryside for Henryk to paint – the peasants, their huts, and above all cows. All his life Henryk had almost a passion for cows [cows and oxen were the subject of many fine future paintings, showing a touching, quite uncanny empathy for the creatures].'

In late September 1938, the couple returned to Warsaw, to a new flat. 'One corner of the studio was arranged for living: there was a round table, a few chairs and two armchairs – all inherited from his father. In another corner was his desk. All the rest of the studio was kept free for working. Henryk put up on the walls a few pictures: [his] large one of the Civil War in Spain [...] There was a large painting of an actress, Zaklicka, I believe her name was, a large self-portrait, sitting, with a beret, and the inevitable pipe, and a picture of three Polish writers sitting round a table. And of course, many others, stacked against the wall. There was another important piece of furniture in the studio: in a recess in approximately the middle of one of the walls, was a divan, on which during that winter I was to spend a great deal of my time posing for Henryk [...] I posed for Henryk every morning. All the pictures that he did of me then were destroyed at the beginning of the war. Now for the first time I saw Henryk, the painter [...] While he painted, he had the appearance of a man not exactly in a trance, but as if the world had suddenly stopped still and he had to get the image of it quickly onto the canvas before it disappeared. The energy of his movements, the rapidity with which he approached me to look at me, before he darted swiftly back to the canvas, were astonishing. And he retained this energy in front of his easel to the very end [...] It was during this winter that he wrote his book, Travels of a Painter [...] Alas, the drawings which Henryk made of the works of art he saw during his travels in France, Italy, Greece and Spain were left behind in Warsaw when we came to England in June [...]

'Henryk decided that he would like to spend three months that summer in Cornwall, painting. And so we packed to leave Poland for, as we thought, three months. Before we left, rather light-heartedly, Henryk looked through his pictures. The political situation was very uncertain, but Henryk did not really believe that war was so close. Yet, he selected about ten of his pictures, put them together against one wall, and labelled them “masterpieces”. He asked Friedecker, on whom he knew he could count, to look after these pictures, in the event of war. Poor Henryk and poor Friedecker. A fire bomb fell on [Henryk's Warsaw studio] on the second day of the war, destroying everything, while Friedecker simply disappeared [...]'.

In London in the summer of 1938, before leaving for Cornwall, Gotlib spent time sketching in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate, the National Gallery and the British Museum. Janet recorded: 'In a sketchbook of that time, there are some drawings of hands from Rembrandt's pictures, a head by Vermeer [...], and several from Raphael's cartoon at the V&A.'

The couple only spent a few weeks in Cornwall, where Gotlib produced many superb drawings and watercolours of subjects such as cows in a field and a man riding a horse. Hearing the dreadful news on the radio that Warsaw and Cracow had been bombed, the couple returned hurriedly to London. In her memoir, Janet described the various rooms and flats that the couple lived in over the ensuing few years. It was in a large, light-filled room in Maida Vale, 'that Henryk had the idea of painting a large Polish triptych, with a centrepiece, size about 8ft by 10ft, representing Christ in Warsaw, September 1939 [...]  During the time he worked in Clifton Gardens, he made many sketches, pencil as well as watercolour, for his “Warsaw”. (These I have since presented to the National Museum in Warsaw). I posed for several of the female figures. Topolski, Marek Zulawski, [the sculptor] Tadeusz Koper [1913-1995] and [Eugeniusz] Cekalski [(1906-1952); he went on to become one of Poland's most distinguished filmmakers] also posed, and Henryk posed himself for the figure of Christ. Luckily, he learned from Topolski that there was an empty studio next to the one in which Topolski worked – still in Maida Vale, and overlooking the canal. Henryk decided immediately to take it – there was no living accommodation and the rent was extremely low, even for those days. The large canvas was taken to the studio, Henryk and I carrying it through the streets as it was not very far away [...] For our first Christmas in London, Topolski and Marian, his friend who later became his wife and mother of his two children, very generously put on in their studio next to the one that Henryk was using, a wonderful dinner for what seemed to be a large number of Poles whom the war had stranded in London.'

In July or August, the couple moved into a studio in Hampstead, belonging to the painter Richard Carline [1896-1980] (a previous tenant had been Mark Gertler), with an almost entirely glass roof; they reluctantly had to leave the place when the Blitz began. They then moved to a spacious room, also in Hampstead; ‘the ambience of this room suited Henryk very well, and a number of good pictures were painted there [...]

'And all the time Henryk worked on the large Warsaw picture. It was while we were here that Henryk bought the tall narrow mirror, which went with us ever afterwards. A large mirror is an essential piece of furniture in the studio. One morning Henryk was posing in the nude in front of the mirror [which] was at the far end of the room, away from the door. Twice a week, our help came to clean the room. Undoubtedly, she knocked on the door before entering, but when Henryk was working, he was deaf to everything. She showed great tact: seeing Henryk stark naked in front of the mirror, she simply turned her back on him and began to tidy up at the other end of the room. When Henryk did realise that there was someone else in the room, he reached for his dressing gown and continued to work.' 

From 1945 onwards Gotlib went on to exhibit regularly and successfully in London, with his first one-man shows at Roland, Browse and Delbanco in September of that year (as Janet has written, 'Henryk did not stay for the private view. He flew off to Warsaw the day before the exhibition opened, accompanying some members of the English Pen Club on a visit to Warsaw. I remember seeing him off in a ramshackle Dakota at Hendon [...] Poland had been devastated, but Henryk and his leftish friends then looked forward optimistically to the rebuilding of Poland [...] rid of the injustices of the pre-war regime') and later at the Crane Kalman Gallery. Two of his pictures - a rustic-looking Hampstead and Cross Roads in Cornwall - were illustrated in the 1946 book Polish Artists in Great Britain (ed. by Tadeusz Potworowki and Marek Zulawski), which also showed paintings by, amongst others, Jankel Adler, Feliks Topolski and Zulawski. In 1949-50 he revisited Cracow to become a Professor at the Academy of Fine Art there, but returned to England. He visited Warsaw again in 1966, a few months before his death.

His early pencil drawings, made in Warsaw between 1906 and 1929, and re-discovered after the Second World War, included Studies of Working Men, Woman Resting on a Bed and Couple Kissing on a Park Bench. These zestful works - which, in their full gamut, show influences ranging from the Intimistes to Cubists - combine intricate draughtsmanship with sureness and lightness of touch.

His spare, sweet, almost deliberately childlike post-war paintings portray a rural Arcadia of female nudes, cows, birds and trees. In an essay, 'Painter's Purpose' (The Studio, issue IX, 1957), he wrote: 'I have painted cows and trees, nudes and angels, apples and skies all my life. And still I am not sure of their material existence. The only thing I am sure of is the reality of colour.'

By the 1950s, his use of colour was becoming more challengingly pungent without losing its essential delicacy. In Girl with Raised Skirt (1957), the fleshy pink-and-white impasto of her gathered skirt is painted with an honest intensity that must have shocked some viewers at the time.

Two standing female nudes, Nude with Bowed Shoulder (1957) and Nude with Hand on Shoulder (1960) show the kind of asymmetrical pose - one arm bent forwards or sideways - seen in his own mid-1950s' self-portrait. By the early sixties, his colourism was darkening in tone, his forms becoming increasingly idiosyncratic, by turns more abruptly angular or more fluid. He was by then painting explicitly religious pictures such as Crucifixion (1960) and The Holy Man (1962). His painting Rembrandt in Heaven (1959-60; Tate Collection), described by one critic as 'obliquely autobiographical', shows the strange, poignant encounter of the great Dutch painter and a seated Christ with a Crown of Thorns.

In some of his late paintings - like Model Dressing, Dog on Beach, Portugal and Trees in the Garden (all 1966) - what he called 'material existence' is at once celebrated and transcended in what are in effect playful abstracted, ecstatic colour poems. He no longer felt he needed to observe nature directly in order to paint.

Gotlib's 1956 oil painting, Self-Portrait with a Duffle Coat, set against a pinkish-grey sky, though somewhat more realistic than his earlier self-portrait, shows him as a visionary figure (with curious black 'splodgy' eyes, which make him appear rather like a blind prophet), who looks at once haunted and astounded by his own self-image. His dog is portrayed at his side, appearing to look at the artist's left hand, which extends expressively forward.

Writing in present-tense diary form, Gotlib described the genesis of this picture:

I am putting on my duffle coat to take my usual morning walk with my dog. Passing the big mirror in the studio, I suddenly notice the yellow of my duffle coat falling down in big folds, surmounted by the red shadows of my head. The dog gets impatient [...] The Venetian reds of his hair, interrupted by white touches, strengthen the accord of yellows and reds [...] The experience is new and unexpected. But we have to go to the fields. The earth is yellow and high up a greyish sky. The image of myself with my dog just seen in the mirror dominates the morning. Glancing up at the sky, I notice how the yellow soil gives to the sky, flat and formless over the earth, a strange red colour. A very cold red. Now I see the third element of my new accord.

I go back to the studio and try to reproduce as exactly and precisely as possible not my own features or those of my dog [...] But my emotion, the image in the mirror and the grey morning in the fields.

It takes time to reduce the vision to essentials. In fact, it takes weeks and months. It is an incessant fight with nature which seduces you by all kinds of attractive plays of form and beauties of colour. But you have to eliminate them. They are disturbing and destroy the purity of what was the original joy [...] of your discovery.