View on Pico de Teide

Author: Stabrowski Kazimierz, 1869 - 1929

Created:  1909-1913.

Material / technique:  pastel, paper.

Dimensions:  50 x 67.5 cm. 

Signature: K. Stabrowski (in the bottom-right corner of the painting).

The landscape of Tenerife is alive, as if the creator sketched the vibration of the environment. This work is between impressionists and abstractionists. One gets the impression that it is not so much the image that captivates, but the atmosphere, the air as a bodily experience.

Between 1909 and 1913, K. Stabrowski traveled extensively. He visited France, Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Gran Canaria, Madeira and the Canary Islands. During a trip to Tenerife, he made a trip to the Pico de Teide volcano, the highest peak in the Atlantic islands. During it, he created a series depicting more views of the mountain. They were exhibited, along with the artist's other pastels, at his exhibition at Warsaw's Zachęta in 1913. In 1915, the artist took all his works and - fleeing the hostilities - left Warsaw for St. Petersburg. Already at the end of the year, at the headquarters of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts there, there was his solo exhibition, and immediately after it, in 1916 in Moscow - another one. Both of them - which were the largest expositions of  K. Stabrovsky's work during his lifetime - received a lively reaction from Russian critics. An extensive account of the Moscow exhibition was published, among others, by the newspaper Russkoye Słowo. In its pages, critic V. Nikolsky wrote, for example, that K. Stabrovsky's exhibition was successful in Petrograd. We learn from it, also, that a number of his works found their way into the hands of local collectors, and that in Moscow, already on the day of the opening, slips of paper appeared next to some sketches with the inscription "Sold".

Reference: quoted in. Lija Skalska-Miecik, Kazimierz Stabrowski - years of study and the beginnings of creative activity, "Yearbook of the National Museum in Warsaw," 1975, p. 633.