They were young, talented, in love with art, willing to experiment and to make sacrifices, ready to have fun and to work hard. They referred to themselves as the Brotherhood of St. Luke (the so-called “St. Luke’s Men”; an art group, active 1925-1939, drawing from 16th and 17th century painting traditions, specialising in historical compositions, landscapes, portraits, genre and biblical scenes). The world was open to them because they had received a government commission for paintings about Polish history for the World Exhibition in New York. In February 1939, their seven large paintings sailed for America – they did not return to Poland until July 2022.

– For my grandfather, after the war, it was not the worst thing that these paintings might never come back, but that they all, i.e. the St. Luke’s Men, already had their lives finished, “settled” – historian Adam Michalak, grandson of Antoni Michalak (1902-1975) from Kazimierz on the Vistula, one of the protagonists of this story, tells TVP Weekly. The other protagonist of this unusual and complicated story is Kazimierz itself, this wonderful city of painters and other wizards.

Kazimierz became famous among the artistic fraternity long before the Brotherhood of St. Luke appeared with its easels, stretchers and paints, but above all with its dedicated ethos of earnest work on perfecting one’s painting craft, and with the custom of accolading painters almost in public, in a colourful procession, in joyful – though taken very seriously – festivities.

Brotherhoods of this type were one of the ways of returning to tradition in inter-war Europe, so one of Antoni Michalak’s grandsons, Jan (also a painter), even wrote his doctoral thesis on the subject, “On the need for new figurative painting resulting from the romantic experience of reality: reflections on painting in the European art circle, with particular reference to the tradition of the Brotherhood of St. Luke”.

Like a medieval guild

The St. Luke’s Men group was formed in 1925 by: Bolesław Cybis, Jan Gotard, Aleksander Jędrzejewski, Eliasz Kanarek, Edward Kokoszko, Antoni Michalak, Jan Podoski, Mieczysław Schultz, Czesław Wdowiszewski, Jan Wydra and Jan Zamoyski; they were later joined by Bernard Frydrysiak, Jeremi Kubicki and Stefan Płużański. The group’s mentor – writes Izabela Mościcka on the website lukaszowcy39.pl – and main theoretician was Tadeusz Pruszkowski, their favourite teacher from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, who had a very strong influence on the work of his students.

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  Pruszkowski was also known for his other tastes, such as flying in an aeroplane from Warsaw to Kazimierz, which – as one can guess – must have been quite a sensation, even in a town accustomed to the artistic extravagances of its guests. A fellow of most excellent fancy, one might say.

Tadeusz Pruszkowski (1888-1942) “adored by his students, taught in an unconventional way. He gave them creative freedom, guided rather than imposed. He participated in their school life without creating barriers or distance. And he was the only one of the professors at the time who placed a strong emphasis on composition. From 1923, he brought his students to open-air workshops in Kazimierz Dolny” – writes Dorota Seweryn-Puchalska of the Nadwiślańskie Museum in Kazimierz on the website mentioned above.

In the town, Pruszkowski built an unusual villa with a large studio. So when the Seven Pictures project was born – allow the capital letter, because it is, after all, also the collective protagonist of this text – he gathered the St. Luke’s Men at his home. For the secret of the Seven Pictures is collective authorship, however strange it may seem today. All the paintings were the same, substantial size – 128 cm by 200 cm; working on them definitely required space.

Prof. Andrzej Nowak tells it this way: “they willingly accepted large commissions executed together, in the spirit of the medieval guild, such as the painting decorations of the Polish transatlantic ships MS Batory and MS Piłsudski. Now, at the urging of their master, Professor Pruszkowski, they stood together to execute a series of canvases for the New York World Exhibition. Bolesław Cybis, Bernard Frydrysiak, Jan Gotard, Aleksander Jędrzejewski, Eliasz Kanarek, Jeremi Kubicki, Antoni Michalak, Stefan Płużański, Janusz Podoski and Jan Zamoyski gathered at the beginning of May 1938 at Professor Pruszkowski’s villa in Kazimierz on the Vistula and began work. It was indeed a collective work: each artist painted what he was best prepared for: faces, figures, clothes, architecture, nature in the background. After six months, as ordered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the job was done. It was thus possible to present it at the vernissage in December 1938 at the Institute of Art Propaganda in Warsaw, before “Batory” sailed from Gdynia to New York on 28 February of the following year – we read on the website łukaszowcy1939.pl.

They did not paint any random scenes from Polish history. The themes of the Seven Paintings were carefully planned by eminent historians, great names not only of that era: Oskar Halecki, Jan Kucharzewski and Roman Dyboski, not without reason officially overlooked in communist education. “The republican freedom of citizens, built in the Republic, the idea of a voluntary union of nations and, finally, the role of a bulwark against civilisations alien to Europe, militant Islam and aggressive, despotic Orthodoxy, which were replaced in Moscow after 1917 by the banner of communism – these are the essential elements of Halecki’s view on what is most important in the Polish historical experience” – wrote Prof. Andrzej Nowak and emphasised that this point of view was also shared by Jan Kucharzewski.

Historians have identified seven themes: the Congress of Gniezno in 1000, the Baptism of Lithuania in 1386, the consolidation of Polish civil liberties with the privilege “neminem captivabimus...” in 1430, the Union of Lublin in 1569, the guarantee of religious tolerance adopted by the Warsaw Confederation four years later, the battle of Vienna in 1683, the Constitution of 3 May 1791. Scholars provided painters with the details – colours, costumes, furniture, orders, flags, etc.

The series of Seven Paintings was, according to Professor Nowak, the ideological heart of the Polish pavilion at the New York exhibition. The paintings – writes the historian – showed the historical achievements of the Republic of Poland and its important place in the European civilisational tradition. The EXPO was opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his speech was shown on television at the exhibition. The Polish Pavilion was officially opened on 3 May. In a moment, Józef Beck, the head of diplomacy, was about to deliver his famous speech to the Sejm with the final phrase “There is only one thing in the life of peoples, nations and states that is priceless. That thing is honour.”

War and oblivion

I will not describe in detail the fate – and furnishings – of the Polish pavilion, but it must be made clear that the war, which began with the German aggression against Poland, virtually meant the end of the exhibition; the Polish pavilion was still in operation until mid-1940. Its commissioner was Prof. Stefan de Ropp, long-time director of the Poznań International Fair, with a wealth of experience – and a huge commitment to the state. But money was needed to maintain the pavilion. Meanwhile, the pavilion was deprived of its source of funding.

The commissioner sold off some of the furnishings, fortunately the lion’s share of the objects to the collection of the Polish Museum in Chicago. The collection of Seven Paintings (and 4 artistic textiles, whose origin is another artistic curiosity: their author is Mieczysław Szymański, painter and textile designer, pupil of prof. Tadeusz Pruszkowski; for the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937 he made a tapestry for which he received the Grand Prix award, and for the New York exhibition he made four separate scenes depicting the victory of John III Sobieski at Vienna) was deposited by Professor Stefan de Ropp at the Jesuit college Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, where it has been on display in the library there since 1958. “Deposited” is the key word because it clearly describes the reality of the Seven Paintings – they were not sold, loaned or donated – they were deposited. But for the communist authorities, this did not matter or perhaps even represented an additional burden.

– My grandfather made efforts to have the paintings returned, or even strove for people to take an interest in their fate, right from 1945 – says Adam Michalak. – Later, in the 1970s and beyond, both his sons, my dad Janusz and uncle Tadeusz, also painters, joined in.

Certainly Antoni Michalak was not helped in these endeavours by his artistic image: he was an eminent painter of religious subjects, he lectured at the Catholic University of Lublin, had been a member of the Association of Catholic Artists “Ars Christiana” since 1936, was an active participant in the underground movement during the war, including rescuing endangered Jewish friends, and after the war pleaded for the fate of Kazimierz.

– No one cared about the paintings left behind in America, and those few who may have cared about their fate were probably afraid to take any action – says Adam Michalak. – After all, the St. Luke’s Men had the reputation of being Sanationist painters, they did not fit in with the Socialist Realist reality.

The St. Luke’s Men come back

Born already at the gates of independence, in 1988, Adam Michalak grew up in an atmosphere of respect, and perhaps even a kind of cult of the St. Luke’s Men and their lost work. He grew up surrounded by images of his grandfather and his friends, in the memory of Professor Tadeusz Pruszkowski, who was murdered by the Germans in 1942, amidst his father and uncle’s recollections of his grandfather Antoni’s contacts with living members of the group scattered around the world.

His uncle, Tadeusz Michalak, was president of the Society of Friends of the City of Kazimierz Dolny (established – oh, my! – in 1925) and founded the local magazine Brulion Kazimierski. It was there, in the first issue, in 2001, that Robert Wójcik’s now historic article “Historia Polski w siedmiu odsłonach” [Polish History in Seven Scenes] was published.

– This was the first serious text about the Seven Paintings and about the St. Luke’s Men – stresses Adam Michalak, who is also credited when it comes to their return to Poland. As a student of history, and later as a qualified historian, and then as a student of art history, he became involved in family initiatives. – I heard with my own ears the argument from a representative of the authorities that there is no way to bring the Seven Paintings back to Poland because there is no suitable place to exhibit them – he says.

Adam Michalak listened to the workshops and training sessions for young leaders organised by the Jacek Maziarski Foundation (FIM), called “the Skolimowska Academy” after the venue. And there, he once decided to talk about his grandfather, about the St. Luke’s Men and the Seven Paintings, about the exhibitions his parents organised in the family gallery and in the Nadwiślańskie Museum (1975, 1982, 1993, 2005). He also talked about his attempts to get the authorities interested in the case, about the support he received from Peter Obst, a Polish activist from the USA, about the efforts of the journalist Jolanta Kessler-Chojecka and about the award-winning reports by the Lublin-based radio journalist Katarzyna Michalak, who also had family ties to the case. And about a book by her mother, Wanda Michalakowa, about the wonders of Kazimierz, including the St. Luke’s Men and their paintings.

– I told her all about it and suddenly I felt that Ms. Iza Galicka was so concerned about the matter, as if it was her own family or her own paintings. I knew, of course, that she was the famous discoverer of El Greco [at the rectory in Kosów Lacki, a village near Siedlce, in 1964 – Ed.], but I did not immediately understand what this meant for the St. Luke’s Men and the Seven Paintings.

Because Izabela Galicka (1931-2019) was like a welsh-terrier on a wild boar hunt: once she caught the trail and even a piece of the animal, she would not let go. Since then, people have started to talk about the St. Luke’s Men – thanks to the FJM and its president Anna Żukowska-Maziarska, the website lukaszowcy1939.pl was created. – In fact, it is the largest and most serious compendium of knowledge about the St. Luke’s Men and their paintings! And Professor Piotr Gliński himself was also interested in the matter and brought it to a happy conclusion – says Adam Michalak.

In July, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage announced that the paintings had returned home. Earlier, in May, a Polish delegation thanked the Americans. – This is a special event for Polish heritage. For many years, various circles and institutions have been striving to ensure that the history of the paintings and tapestries from Le Moyne College is not forgotten. It is our common success that we are meeting today in Syracuse, at Le Moyne College, to sign an agreement on the transfer of works by Polish artists back to Poland – said Deputy Prime Minister Piotr Gliński during a ceremony at Le Moyne College, where an agreement was signed on 4 May, by virtue of which the works of the St. Luke’s Men were transferred to the collection of the Polish History Museum.

– As an art historian, I am very pleased that these works have returned to Poland – Dorota Seweryn-Puchalska of the Nadwiślańskie Museum in Kazimierz Dolny emphasised in an interview with Polish Press Agency (PAP). – I am also happy that, thanks to this, the memory of the St. Luke’s Men’s paintings will also return. Each of them was a great individual, and they constituted an important artistic current in the inter-war period. They must not be forgotten.

And Kazimierz invariably waits for visitors because – as Tadeusz Pruszkowski wrote in Wiadomości Literackie [Literary News] in 1939 – “I was surprised by the similarity of Kazimierz’s mood to charming Italian towns. Nothing at all inferior and very much its own. A sandy, wide river, mountainous banks overgrown with incredibly lush, varied vegetation, amazingly beautiful and original old architecture, romantic ruins, in a vast and wide often clouded landscape”.

“Kazimierz is the most outstanding film actor! I say this without any exaggeration. Water, rocks, gorges, architecture... and all for free.” Kazimierz on the Vistula River became this actor in the film „Szczęśliwy wisielec, czyli Kalifornia w Polsce” [Happy Hanging, or California in Poland], shot by Pruszkowski with a Debris-type camera. He wrote the script together with Feliks Topolski and Zygmunt Jurkowski. The film was even screened at the Splendid cinema in Warsaw. Perhaps now it is time for another film – about Pruszkowski, the St. Luke’s Men and the Seven Pictures, now that they have finally come home.

–Barbara Sułek-Kowalska

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

–Translated by jz