2024-04-25
Wlastimil Hofman is currently one of the most sought-after artists on the Polish antiquarian market. Looking at the portraits of this painter, we see different clothes, different realities, but often familiar emotions. We wonder how history can hide behind given people. There is certainly a touching story behind all the paintings in which Hofman depicted his wife, Ada.
Wlastimil Hofman (1881-1970) was a Polish painter. He became known as an outstanding representative of symbolism and a great portraitist. He was born as a son of a Pole and a Czech, he said about himself that he was a Pole. His teachers included Jacek Malczewski, Leon Wyczółkowski and Jan Stanisławski. It was the work of the former that greatly influenced the artistic path of the young art student. Interestingly, he was the first Pole to become a member of Wiener Secession Galerie and the second (after Olga Boznańska) member of Société Nationale de Beaux-Arts in Paris.
The heroes of Hofmann's compositions are frequently thoughtful, melancholic people. It seems that the painter wanted to create a deep psychological profile for each portrayed person. We meet these people in fleeting moments of prayer, walking or in dramatic moments such as funerals. This art lacks monumentalisation, so typical of the triumphant Art Nouveau of that time, replaced by calmness, delicacy, a specific impression of silence and suspension.
The story of Wlastimil Hofman and Ada Geller should start with the statement that Ada was the great love and irreplaceable muse of the painter. During their life together she was a model and an inspiration. Apart from that, she helped with technical matters, cooked and was a good providential spirit. The beginning of their acquaintance did not herald such an end. The artist took notice of the girl when it turned out that a few years earlier she had advised her father to buy a painting by him. The work was hanging in the dining room of her husband, Wlastimil's close cousin Ludwik Hammer. Due to the outbreak of World War I the painter stayed with his family and befriended Ada. Three years later they left home together, which caused quite a scandal. Already a year earlier, the famous painting "Self-portrait with future wife" was created. In this work, they are walking serenely through a winter landscape, gazing at one point (perhaps the severity of the winter scene is a harbinger of the present and future difficulties that lie ahead of them?). In 1920, Ada divorced Ludwik and married Wlastimil. From that year they spend nineteen peaceful years together in Cracow, until the idyll was interrupted by another war. It turns out that they were on a Gestapo list for helping Czech refugees. The escape through many countries is made more difficult by the fact that the painter is ill, and Ada carries a heavy rucksack with her husband's brushes and paints. They end up in Tel Aviv, where Ada searches through rubbish heaps for tins and pieces of cardboard, so that the painter can paint. The couple returned to Cracow in 1946 and soon after moved to their new home, "Wlastimilówka". In the autumn of their lives, in 1955, they got married again, this time in church. Their love and friendship lasted over 50 years. They died on the same day, two years apart. Adzia, as Wlastimil called her, in 1968, he in 1970.
