Geobiographies of prominent Polish painters: Changing hierarchies of art cities and patterns of artistic migrations from 1760 to 1939

Abstract

In the field of art studies, there is a growing interest in data-driven approaches to analyse the spatial organisation of art worlds. Biographical databases of notable individuals have been used to uncover the emergence and decline of globally significant art cities, while less attention has been given to peripheral art systems. This paper aims to address this gap by utilising a curated dataset that contains information about the birth, death, study, and work locations, as well as migrations, of 327 prominent Polish painters to reveal the changing hierarchies of art cities relevant to them, both within and outside of historic Polish lands, between 1760 and 1939. These cities’ positions were determined using four measures: the size of their artistic communities; the prominence of their members; their role as centres of art education; and their centrality in networks of artistic migrations. The study investigates how major geopolitical shifts have impacted the evolution of the Warsaw-Krakow artistic duopoly and other secondary Polish art cities, their connections to art centres of the partitioning powers, and their linkages with major European art cities. The development of Polish art cities is discussed in the context of the varying degrees of political and cultural freedoms in the partitions of Poland, and how these factors influenced the stability of art world institutions in these cities and their capacity to attract talent. This research avenue opens up possibilities for studying spatial patterns of other artistic professions and other national and transnational art systems.