On Friday, 25 September, the opening of the exhibition “I Wanted to Rebuild the Polish Soul. In Tribute to Władysław Reymont, the First Nobel Laureate of Independent Poland” will take place. It begins at 3:00 p.m.; admission is free. The exhibition will be open until 31 October 2015.
On 13 November 1924, Władysław Reymont was awarded the Nobel Prize by the Swedish Academy for Literature for his four-volume novel “The Peasants”. To mark the 90th anniversary of this event and the 90th anniversary of the writer’s death, 2014/2015 was declared the Year of Reymont. Such important anniversaries, connected with the life and work of outstanding writers, provide an excellent opportunity to reflect on the universal values conveyed by literature.
The concept of the exhibition “I Wanted to Rebuild the Polish Soul. In Tribute to Władysław Reymont, the First Nobel Laureate of Independent Poland”, presented at the Copper Museum in Legnica, is based on Reymont’s division of the novel into the four seasons, which for centuries have set the rhythm and character of rural community life. A reporter’s instinct combined with spiritual depth enabled the writer to capture nature, landscapes and the colourful social fabric of the Polish countryside in his novel in an unsurpassed manner. Reymont himself used to say:
I am a barbarian, I know that, but I openly admit that I always prefer nature to art.
The exhibition comprises paintings of the countryside and its nature by leading artists working during the period when Reymont’s Lipce were taking on a realistic shape in the pages of the novel written between 1901 and 1908. Among the works on display, particular attention should be paid to those by Józef Chełmoński, Józef Mehoffer, Włodzimierz Tetmajer, Teodor Axentowicz and Leon Wyczółkowski.
Surrounded by paintings by these artists, the exhibition also features the author’s manuscript of “The Peasants”, normally kept at the Ossoliński National Institute in Wrocław.
Copper Museum/ii