Jan WAŁACH (1884-1979), Fiddler in the background of the forest, 1939/2014

Woodcut, cardboard; 29 x 31 cm (composition), 34 x 42 cm (sheet).
Glosa: The woodcut is from the "Istebna" portfolio pressed in 2014 from the original plates, facsimile of the artist's signature under the composition.
Jan Walach was born in 1884. He came from a family of Beskid highlanders from Istebna. He was a pupil of Jozef Mehoffer, Julian Fałat, Ferdynand Ruszczyc, Jan Stanislawski. Thanks to a scholarship from the Academy of Fine Arts, he studied at the private Academie Julien in Paris and at the Parisian Ecole de Beaux Arts in the studio of French painter Fernand Cormon (his students also included (Henri Marret, Henri Matisse, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh). He returned to Istebna in 1911. During World War I, he served in the Austrian army as a painter and medalist, drawing maps, painting portraits of soldiers and battlefield pictures, while touring almost the entire arc of the Carpathian Mountains with the 100th Regiment of the Cieszyn Land. After the war he was awarded the Golden Cross of Merit with a crown for bravery. He debuted with an exhibition of drawings in 1904 in Minsk. "Discovered" and systematically promoted by his long-time patron, Jerzy Warchałowski, he later exhibited his works in group exhibitions in Cracow, Katowice and Warsaw. After World War II, he continued to live and create in Istebna. He created until the age of 95, and died in 1979.
Jan Walach's work is close to the tradition of naturalism, which developed from the mid-19th century. It is characterized by a desire to meticulously depict the observed reality, but without trying to show the dark sides of life-the whole is harmonized, full of peace and balance between nature and work.
The native Silesian Beskid was a source of inspiration for the artist, from which he drew to the fullest extent-landscape, culture, custom, man and the reality of a bygone time were recorded in watercolor, drawing, sculpture, gouache and woodcut.