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Lviv Pantheon (Caricatures of Figures from the Lviv Scientific and Artistic World of the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century)

Tadeusz Baracz

Basic information

ID: С-I-33
Author: Tadeusz Baracz
Name: Lviv Pantheon (Caricatures of Figures from the Lviv Scientific and Artistic World of the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century)
Date of creation: 1896–1898
Country: Austro-Hungarian Empire
Culture: Modern times
Technique: moulding
Material: plaster
Dimensions (height x width x depth, cm): 39 x 24.5 x 21

Additionally

Type: sculpture
Genre: caricature
Plot: Caricature
Provenance: National Gallery of Lviv (until 1940)

Information about author

Author: Tadeusz Baracz
Artist's lifetime: 1849–1905
Country: Austrian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire
Biography: Tadeusz Baracz (24 March 1849, Lviv – 12 March 1905, Lviv) was a Polish sculptor of Armenian origin, one of the most famous sculptors in Lviv in the second half of the 19th century. He was the son of Jakub Baracz, the owner of the Krakow Hotel, and Teresa of the Truchlinski family. He studied at a cadet school in the Austrian town of Hainburg as his father planned a career in the army for his son. He later graduated from a real school in Lviv. He began his artistic training in 1868–1869 at the Krakow School of Fine Arts under Wladyslaw Luszkiewicz and Henryk Kosowski. He studied at the Munich Academy of Arts in the studio of Max Windmann (1869–1871). He continued his training in Florence in the studio of Augusto Rivalto (1872–1875). At the beginning of 1876, he returned to Lviv. The sculptor's studio in the "Krakow" Hotel on Bernardynska Square (now Soborna Square) became a meeting place for photography enthusiasts. On 27 March 1891, a meeting of photography enthusiasts was held, which marked the beginning of the institutionalisation of their activities. Baracz's early works (until 1875) were in the late Romantic style, while his later works were realistic, neo-Renaissance and neo-Baroque. The artist's works show a synthesis of the traditions of the Munich and Viennese schools of sculpture, the latter having been integrated into Lviv thanks to a trip to Vienna in the second half of the 1870s and collaboration with the sculpture company of Julian Markowski, one of the brightest representatives of the Viennese school of sculpture. He began to exhibit his works in Lviv while studying at the Munich Academy of Art. He participated in the annual exhibitions of the Society of Fine Arts (Towarzystwo przyjaciół sztuk pięknych we Lwowie – TPSP) (1874–1904). In 1891, he was awarded a prize at the International Exhibition in Berlin for his work "The Head of an Old Man". In 1893, he exhibited his works in Chicago (USA). In January 1895, he joined the "Committee of Experts" of the TPSP with S. Batowski, S. Dembicki, T. Popiel and J. Styka. In 1897–1900, he participated in the sculptural decoration of the Great City Theatre in Lviv (now Solomiia Krushelnytska Lviv State Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet), several Lviv buildings, created many monumental monuments, portraits and tombstones, mostly in the Lychakiv cemetery. He also tried his hand at animal painting: in 1929, he exhibited his "Dog's Head" at one of the Lviv exhibitions. Famous are the heraldic lions created by T. Baracz: at the entrance to the Town Hall and on the grave of Konstanty Ordon in the Lychakiv cemetery. The sculptor died in Lviv at the age of 56 after a long illness and was buried in the Lychakiv cemetery (Field 59). In 1905, a posthumous exhibition of Baracz's works was held, presenting 120 reliefs, sculptural groups, and busts. After Baracz's death, his brother Roman donated the sculptor's works to the City Gallery and Ossolineum Library. In 1940, during the nationalisation of private art collections, the Ossolinski collection was transferred to the Lviv Art Gallery (now Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery). The works by Tadeusz Baracz are kept in the National Museum in Krakow and the Tarnow Museum in Poland.

Object description

The multi-figure sculptural group "Lviv Pantheon" (1896–1898) is a caricature of the representatives of the Lviv scientific and artistic circles of the last quarter of the 19th century. The work is characterised by grotesqueness, narrative, energetic modelling of forms and many textual references. The phantasmagoric and grotesque imagery refers to Gothic sculpture, chimaeras and gargoyles, and medieval bestiaries. The echoes of a fable, a short didactic story that allegorically satirises human actions and relationships and formulates a moral conclusion, are essential in the imaginative solution of the sculpture. In particular, we can assume that T. Baracz's idea was inspired by the works of the seventeenth-century French poet, the ancestor of the fable in world literature, Jean de La Fontaine: "The Animals Suffering from the Plague" and "The Lion, the Monkey, and the Two Donkeys". Significant in the formation of the artistic image is the controversy of "high – low", based on the opposition of the semantics of the pantheon, in the figurative sense – a series of prominent people, and the satirical nature of the image.

Inscriptions

On the base on the right: "PANTEON LWOWSKI / 16 7".

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery