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Adam Didur as Mephistopheles from Charles Gounod's "Faust"

Kazimiera Malaczynska-Pajzderska

Basic information

ID: С-I-407
Author: Kazimiera Malaczynska-Pajzderska
Name: Adam Didur as Mephistopheles from Charles Gounod's "Faust"
Date of creation: 1911
Country: Austro-Hungarian Empire
Culture: Contemporary times
Technique: moulding
Material: plaster
Dimensions (height x width x depth, cm): 50 x 40 x 25

Additionally

Type: sculpture 3D
Genre: portraiture
Plot: Portrait bust
Provenance: National Gallery of Lviv (until 1940)

Information about author

Author: Kazimiera Malaczynska-Pajzderska
Artist's lifetime: 1879–1959
Country: Austro-Hungarian Empire, Poland
Biography: Kazimiera Malaczynska-Pajzderska (4 March 1879, Buchach, now Ternopil region – 12 April 1959, Poznan, Poland) was a sculptor and painter, one of Lviv's most prominent representatives of women's art. The artist was born in Buchach to the Hellersperg-Heller family. In 1897 (according to other sources in 1903), she married Marian Antoni Malaczynski. The artist began her studies in 1898–1900 at the Public Drawing and Sculpture Hall of the Lviv Art and Industrial School and continued them in 1901–1905 with S.-K. Ostrowski and A. Popiel at the private school of S. Batowski, A. Augustynowicz and O. Reichan. In 1906 and 1908–1910 (1906–1913, according to other sources), Kazimiera Malaczynska-Pajzderska studied in Paris at the then popular Académie de Colarossi and the Académie des Grandes Chaumières under Antoine Bourdelle and Felix Charpentier. In 1911 (1913, according to other sources), she married, for a second time in Paris, to the art historian Nicodemus Pajzderski. Until 1913 she signed her works as "K. Małaczyńska" or "K. Heller-Małaczyńska".
Her studies in the artistic centres of Europe led her to experiment with forms, inspired by the Impressionism of Auguste Rodin and the work of Antoine Bourdelle, based on an understanding of the ancient heritage. In 1909, she debuted at exhibitions in Lviv with portraits of Lviv President Tadeusz Rutowski, the Polish modernist poet Jan Kasprowicz, the writer Mariia Levytska and other vigorously modelled sculptures. In 1910, she exhibited a portrait of Adamo Didur as Mephistopheles and the composition "Orphans" at the Paris Salon. In the same year, three plaster sculptures by Kazimiera Malaczynska-Pajzderska were exhibited at the General Exhibition of Polish Art in Lviv: a sketch "Orphans", "Male Torso" (probably a portrait of the painter Tadeusz Pruszkowski), and "Young Man Thinking" (1910). At the Autumn Exhibition in Lviv, eight of the sculptor's works were exhibited, including "Bust of Dobrusia Lesnevych", a portrait of the actor Adamo Didur as Mephistopheles, and "Bust of the philosopher Kazimierz Twardowski" (1911). At the exhibitions in Lviv in 1911, Kazimiera Malachynska-Paizderska presented a bust of Wladyslaw Mickiewicz (1911), a portrait of Marusia Horetska of the Mickiewicz Family (1911), a bust of Helena Bielska (1911), and a portrait of the singer Fernandez (1911). Before leaving Lviv for Poznan in December-January 1912–1913, she exhibited two plaster sculptures, "Portrait of Wladyslaw Witwicki" and "Portrait of Mrs P.". The artist's participation in exhibitions at the Zacheta Gallery in Warsaw (1912) and at the Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Poznan (1915) was successful.
The artist is known for her sculptural portraits – female, lyrical, and male, with the expression of intellectual, creative, strong-willed nature. A sign of her individual style was psychologism, the reproduction of changing moods, behind which one can see the essential, impressionist pictorial form, asymmetry of compositions, expressive movement, impulsive, almost painterly surface treatment, echoes of the Secession, modernised classics and the archaic. Plaster, marble, and bronze embodied creative ideas, and the artist created dozens of works, primarily heads, torsos, and busts.
In the works by Kazimiera Malaczynska-Pajzderska, made between 1908–1912, the maturity of her creative style, the accuracy of psychological features and the authenticity of the reproduction of individual characteristics attract attention. The play of light and shade and the sculpture's connection with the environment are ensured by the "painterly" contours, the indistinct linearity, and the natural inclination of the heads. In addition to portraits and three-dimensional compositions, the artist created several reliefs between 1908 and 1913.
In the field of painting, Kazimiera Malaczynska-Pajzderska created oil portraits, floral still lifes, and landscapes of Lviv, Volyn and Italy, influenced by Impressionism.
From 1913, the artist worked mainly in the portrait genre in Poznan. The medal of the General Regional Exhibition of 1929 and the figurative bas-reliefs on the monument to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ (1932, 1939) belong to this period.

Object description

The composition is a portrait of Adam Didur, a Polish opera singer and one of the most prominent bass voices of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, as Mephistopheles in Charles Gounod's "Faust". Born in Wola Sekowa near Sanok, the future singer began his studies at the Lviv Teachers' Seminary in 1894 while also singing in the university choir. He studied singing with Walery Wysocki, professor at the Conservatory of the Galician Music Society, the best singing teacher in Lviv, to whom Solomiia Krushelnytska, Oleksandr Myshuha, Oleksandr Bandrovskyi, Mykola Levytskyi and Adam Okonskyi owe their skills. He continued his singing studies with the famous Francesco Emmerich in Milan. He began his opera career at the theatre of the small Italian town of Pinerolo in Piedmont. He performed in Cairo, Alexandria, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires during the following seasons. He was accepted at the Milan opera house "La Scala" on his return to Europe. In 1908, Adam Didur sang the leading bass roles in the operas "Faust" by Ch. Gounod, "Mefistofele" by A. Boito and "Les Huguenots" by G. Meyerbee at the Great City Theatre in Lviv. Kazimiera Malaczynska-Pajzderska's impressions of the theatre at that time likely inspired her to create this portrait. The first step towards the realisation of the creative idea was the bust of Adam Didur (1910), which was exhibited at the Lviv Autumn Exhibition in November–December 1910, together with eight other newly created sculptures. The semantic basis of the work is based on the themes of transformation, man and his role, creativity as a game and game as creativity, which were popular at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition to the portrait of the famous opera singer, the artistic aspects of the image are Mephistopheles' shrewdness, insidiousness, and mellifluence. The peculiarity of the image lies in the plastic-musical synaesthesia and the connection with the theatrical action, visualised by the emotional expression and the openness to the imaginary space of the stage. Rodin's inspiration for the sculptor's work is evident in the impulsive, almost painterly treatment of the surface, reminiscent of an Impressionist brushstroke. K. Malaczynska-Pajzderska's creative style is characterised by the sharpness of psychological characterisation, dynamics, and asymmetry of plastic masses.

Inscriptions

Signed and dated on the left side of the base: "K. Małaczyńska / 1911".

Portrayed person