Ferdynand Ruszczyc was a Polish painter, graphic and theatre artist. He laid the foundation for the Belarus school of landscape painting.
Background
Ferdynand Ruszczyc was born on December 10, 1870, in Bohdanów, Russian Empire (now Belarus). His Christian upbringing and the beauty of the surrounding landscape could not help but shape the future artist's character. His father Edward Ruszczyc (1830-1910) and Dutch mother Alvina Munch (1837-1918) had four daughters and one son, Ferdynand. In keeping with family tradition, the daughters were baptized and raised in the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession, while their son adopted his father's Catholic faith. Notwithstanding this division, the life of the Ruszczyc family was marked by sincere acceptance of their differences and culture of exalted moral standards.
Education
Ferdynand attended the Minsk classical preparatory school from 1883 to 1890. A talented pupil who enjoyed studying, he was especially successful in the sciences. Edward Ruszczyc wanted his son to follow the career path of his grandfather Ferdynand (1786-1846) and become a lawyer. Ferdynand obeyed his father and after graduating from preparatory school with a gold medal in 1890 he enrolled in the St. Petersburg University Department of Law, but then switched majors and began taking painting classes at the Imperial Academy of Arts under the direction of Ivan Shishkin and Arkhip Kuindzhi.
Career
After his graduation from the Imperial Academy of Arts, Ruszczyc moved to his parents' home in Bohdanow, where the familiar landscape never failed to stir his creativity. He made extensive tours of Western Europe incorporating much of the styles he came across into his own art.
In 1899, 1901, and 1902 he took part in the exhibitions of the Mir Isskustwa group; in 1900 he joined the Sztuka (Art) Society of Polish Artists, with which he regularly exhibited. He also presented his works at annual exhibitions of adepts of the St. Petersburg Academy (until 1900) and at the Warsaw Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts (from 1899). He spent the years 1904-1907 in Warsaw, together with Kazimierz Stabrowski, Xawery Dunikowski, Konrad Krzyżanowski, and Karol Tichy, and co-created the organizational foundations of the School of Fine Arts in which he took up the post of professor. In the 1907/1908 academic year, he headed the Landscape Faculty at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków.
In 1908, together with Józef Mehoffer, he organized a grand presentation of Polish art in Vienna. After settling in Vilnius in the same year, he completely abandoned painting for the sake of intensive pedagogical and organizational activity; he initiated several events important for the artistic culture of Vilnius. He created applied graphics, designed posters, graphic design for magazines and books, as well as theatre costumes. He made a significant contribution to the revival of local theatre, staging Słowacki’s Lilla Weneda (1909), Rostand’s Orlątko (1912), Wyspiański’s Warszawianka (1913), Corneille’s Cyda (1924), and Wyspiański’s November Night (1930). He took part in the work of conservation commissions and the sessions of the Committee for the Construction of the Adam Mickiewicz Monument in Vilnius. He published articles on the monuments of the Vilnius region. Between 1918 and 1919, he contributed to the establishment of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Stefan Batory University, where he was appointed First Dean.
Ruszczyc worked in many different fields. He conceived of and became a founder and first chairman of the Devotees of Vilna Society. As Chairman of the Heritage Conservation Commission, he traveled to the farthest corners of the Vilna Region (together with Napoleon Orda and Jasep Drazdowicz) to draw its once magnificent old castles, other historical buildings, and the small streets of Vilna. Ruszczyc illustrated numerous books and magazines and created stage designs for official events and many theatre productions at the Vilna University.
Book illustration was especially important for Ruszczyc. He contributed to every noteworthy publication by designing book jackets, as well as posters, postage, and official stamps, medals, seals, and emblems. Ruszczyc designed close to a dozen flags for the military, professional guilds, societies, and schools. His contributions marked a special period in the history of book printing in Vilna, and even today his approach to book graphics draws the attention of scholars. Journalism also played an important part in Ruszczyc's professional life: he wrote prolifically for periodicals, gave interviews, and worked on his memoirs. From 1894 to 1932 he kept a diary, which later became an important source of information for scholars of his life.
Such an intense professional schedule and involvement in public life could not but take a toll on the artist's health. In 1932 Ruszczyc suffered a stroke, which left him unable to speak or paint with his right hand. He stopped teaching and canceled public engagements, settling in Bohdanow where he continued to sketch. Ruszczyc retired in 1935; he was awarded the title of honorary professor at the Stephen Batory University.
Views
A pure landscape dominated Ruszczyc’s paintings indivisibly. In his early, realistic works, the artist’s fascination with the sea revealed itself, the changeability of which he carefully observed during his stays in Crimea, Rügen, and Bornholm. At that time, he focused his attention on a small fragment of the landscape to collide the mobility of the foamed waves with the hard matter of the rocky coast in a narrow frame.
Ruszczyc’s mature paintings, characterized by a concentrated expression, saturated colors, and rich texture, are among the most original achievements of Polish modernism (Old Apple Trees, 1900). In the views of the native landscape – reflected through the prism of emotions and mood – the artist pictured the power of the forces of nature subjected to cyclical transformations, extracted the power of the elements that determined human existence.
The bird’s-eye perspective, borrowed from Japanese woodcuts, broadens the horizon of view and makes it possible to flatten and accumulate planes of composition. This method of depicting space in the painting from an elevated point of observation is characteristic of Ruszczyc’s style. The influence of Japanese-inspired aesthetics is also visible in the composition titled Clouds Reflected in Water (1900), in which the sketchy and laconic forms of nature border on abstraction.
Membership
Ferdynand Ruszczyc was a member of the Committee for the Conservation of the Adam Mickiewicz Monument. He also became a founder and first chairman of the Devotees of Vilna Society.