| Adam Kossowski | |
|---|---|
Self-Portrait, 1977 |
|
| Born | 5 December 1905 Nowy Sacz, Southern Poland |
| Died | 31 March 1986 (aged 80) London |
| Nationality | Polish |
| Field | Painting, Murals, Ceramics, Sacred art |
| Training | Warsaw Technical University (architecture), Cracow Academy of Fine Arts (painting), Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (painting) |
| Works | Aylesford Priory, Aylesford; History of the Old Kent Road; The Apocalypse of St. John, St. Benet's Chaplaincy, Queen Mary, University of London |
| Patrons | Rev. Malachy Lynch, O.Carm. |
| Influenced by | Italian Renaissance art, Polish wayside shrines, Book of Revelation, Luca della Robbia, Blaise Pascal, Paul Cézanne, Wojciech Weiss, Felicjan Kowarski, Leonard Pekalski, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin |
Adam Kossowski (1905–1986) was a Polish artist, born in Nowy Sacz, notable for his works for the Catholic Church in England, where he arrived in 1943[1] as a refugee from Soviet labor camps and was invited in 1944 to join the Guild of Catholic Artists and Craftsmen.[2]
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In 1923, uncertain about a career as a painter, Kossowski began architecture studies at Warsaw Technical University.[3] But after two years there, he turned to painting and was accepted into the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts.[4] During his time in Cracow he worked on the restoration of paintings at Wawel Castle. In 1929 he returned to Warsaw and its Academy of Fine Arts.[5] Traveling on a government grant, Kossowski experienced Italian art in Rome (where he studied tempera painting techniques), Florence, Naples and Sicily.[6]
On 29 October 1938, Kossowski married Stefania Szurlej, whom he had met in Rome. He was named "senior-assistant" at the Warsaw Academy of Art and won first prize to create interior sgraffito work at Warsaw's Central Railway Station.[7] But this project was abandoned after Germany invaded Poland in September, 1939. Kossowski's wife fled with her parents; and Kossowski himself went east,[8] where he was arrested by invading Russian troops in November, 1939.[9]
Kossowski was first imprisoned at Skole and then at Kharkov, both in the Ukraine.[10] He told Fr. Martin Sankey, "In prison I stayed about a year. Later we received sentences. I got five years of hard labor camp and was sent to the part of the Gulag which is called Peczlag, on the river Peczora which runs into the Polar Sea and I stayed there till 1942."[11]
At this time Kossowski began to pray, " … because when I was so deep in this calamity and nearly dead I promised myself that if I came out of this subhuman land I would tender my thanks to God. I hesitate to call it a vow, it was rather a promise to myself but later I used to think that it was my obligation …"[12]
He went on to describe his release with other Polish prisoners in order to form the Polish Armed Forces in the East under General Władysław Anders:
From the camp on the river Amu-Daria—where I was sent from the North—I was evacuated finally with other Poles to the banks of the Caspian Sea from where we went to Pahlevi on the Persian coast. There the Polish ex-prisoners gradually received English uniforms, our old rags infected with all sorts of disease and insects being burned, and we started the journey towards Teheran and from there to Palestine.[13]
After several months of recuperation in Palestine, Kossowski, through the efforts of his wife in London, travelled on the liner RMS Scythia to Scotland. In 1943 he joined the Polish Ministry of Information in London, where he worked throughout the war.[14]
Working from a studio at Hampstead (6 Frognal Gardens), Kossowski composed work for his first show in London, entitled "A Polish Soldier's Journey", which opened on 7 June 1944[15] and consisted of new drawings and some he had made during his difficult sojourn in the Ukraine and on through to Palestine. In a brief note on the show, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs observed,
The drawings produced in the course of the three years of the artist's life thus absorbed, are notable for showing, apart from a real power of interpreting the local character of each scene, a rare sense of the dramatic, the gift of effective silhouetting being particularly characteristic. We see here well exemplified the profit which the artist (who long taught mural painting at Warsaw Academy) derived from his protracted studies of the frescoes in Rome and Assisi. Figure-drawing, of a very incisive kind, inevitably comes much to the fore in scenes which succeed each other on the walls of the exhibition, but many of the impressions of landscape, here displayed, will also remain impressed upon the spectator's memory. Altogether, this is an art very much in the best Polish tradition, and with an individual note definitely its own.[16]
After winning a prize for the oil painting Jesus Bearing the Cross (also known as Veronica) in 1944, Kossowski was invited to join the Guild of Catholic Artists by its chairman, sculptor Philip Lindsey Clark.[17] This connection, in turn, led to Kossowski's first major commission from Fr. Malachy Lynch, prior of The Friars at Aylesford, Kent—the seven-panel History of the Carmelites of Aylesford in tempera.[18]
Kossowski's first large ceramic project, a Rosary Way, also came as an Aylesford commission. When the artist suggested that he may not be "the man who should do that", Fr. Malachy replied, "Adam, I am sure Our Lady has sent you here for that purpose."[19] And upon this successful venture followed "the biggest ceramic commission that I ever had till then", The Vision of St. Simon Stock.[20] Kossowski recalled:
At that time I had already had some experience with the famous old Fulham Pottery which was still operating. They were quite ready to fire for me the larger pieces of ceramics in their old-fashioned kiln, one not used anymore elsewhere, heated by coal and coke. They could get only one temperature and one kind of glaze. You could not make any changes and I realized that every piece could be fired only once. So I had to put the colours and the glazes and the body in one firing only. It was a miracle that it came out quite alright, with very few small cracks. And the temperature had to be very high—at least 1200 degrees.[21]
Casts from the original Vision of St. Simon Stock were also sent to three Carmelite ministries in the United States:
Kossowski's creative relationship with the Aylesford Carmelites lasted from 1950 to 1972. From 1953 to 1970 he worked in London on large reliefs and murals at his studio on Old Brompton Road. In 1970 he closed that studio and worked at his home studio, 49 Chesilton Road.[22]
From 1953 to 1970, Kossowski completed many commissions for large murals and reliefs.[23] Among these would be the sgraffito work of The Apocalypse of St. John (1964) in St. Benet's Chaplaincy, Queen Mary College, University of London and "probably his largest composition",[24] the 2000-tile[25] the ceramic The History of Old Kent Road (1964) at the former North Peckham Civic Center in London. Of The Apocalypse of St. John, Terlecki has written,
Kossowski often worked on it until late in the night or the early hours of morning. He would remain alone with his vision. This was also dictated by the medium because of [sic] the top layer of the sgraffito dries quickly. But the creator's sharpness of sight and precision of hand caused him to vanquish technical difficulties.[26]
Adam Kossowski died in London on 31 March 1986 and is buried at Aylesford, Kent.[27]