O wystrzygankach Karola Frycza

English Title: On the collages of Karol Frycz

In: Biuletyn Historii Sztuki, 67 (2005), Nr. 3-4. pp. 293-299

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Translation of abstract (English)

Karol Frycz learnt to compose pictures from pieces of paper as a student of the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule (in 1902-3) during the lectures of Alfred Roller. From 1904 he created paper cut-outs according to his own, original method. Teofil Trzcinski described them as "collages made from the colour paper used by bookbinders, joined in such finely designed ways that from not too great a distance they lent the impression of mosaics made from a bizarre kind of material". Paintings, architecture and birds were the most commonly chosen subjects. The collages proved very popular, being hung among other places in the headquarters of the Society of Polish Applied Arts (TPSS) and Jan Michalik’s confectionery shop. They were displayed at the 1905 Cracow Exhibition of Modern Fabrics and Ceramics, in the Society of Friends of the Fine Arts in Lwow (L’viv) in the same year and. the 26th Exhibition of the Austrian Painters’ Union "Secession" of 1906 held in Vienna. Frycz’s collages were eulogised in the cabaret repertoires of the Zielony Balonik,("Green Balloon"), while Kazimierz Sichulski in his pictures of 1905 and 1908 titled "Kabaret szalony" ("Lunatic Cabaret") as well as in caricature (1906) portrayed the artist with his characteristic attribute: a pair of scissors. In the collections of the National Museum in Cracow are to be found two pictures by Frycz carried out using the technique of composing pictures from paper: "Kwoka z piskletami" ("Hen with her brood") and "Perliczki w ogrodzie" ("Guinea-fowl in the garden"). Composed in 1903 and 1906 respectively, these works were inaccurately dated 1913, for which reason they were mistakenly associated with the later technique of cubist collage. Both pictures were presented a number of times at exhibitions of art from the Mloda Polska ("Young Poland") movement, also as a result of their correlation with Japanese woodcuts. From 1907 no paper collages of this kind are recorded in the creative work of Karol Frycz.