From ‘Peripheral’ Warsaw to No Less Marginal Groningen: Mieczysław Szczuka’s Artistic Influence on Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article presents a remarkable case study of artistic influences between two avant-garde artists who still gain insufficient recognition in international accounts of European modern art, namely between Mieczysław Szczuka and Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman – eminent representatives of Polish and Dutch interwar avant-gardes, respectively. They both lived and worked far from historiographical artistic ‘centres’, did not travel much, yet their work indicates considerable influence exerted by one of these ‘peripheral’ artists on the other. Interestingly, it is the Polish artist Szczuka whose works became a source of artistic inspiration for the Dutchman Werkman, providing a remarkable example of East-West artistic influence that has so far rarely been recognized by the historiographers of the avant-garde. This particular case study is based on an analysis of preserved historical material and selected artworks that give evidence of Szczuka’s influence on Werkman and at the same time question historiographical assumptions regarding cultural mobility ‘from centres to peripheries’ and ‘from West to East’.