Who Was Stanisław Szukalski
There is perhaps no more insidious question, for which the answer will always be inexhaustible.
Stanisław Szukalski was born with a creativity that life could not suppress. The years in which he existed and created, and their extraordinary number (94! years), made him a sculptor, illustrator, painter, photographer, architect, champion of Slavic culture, philosopher, writer, playwright, traveler, historian, ethnologist, anthropologist, and anthropolinguist. Living at the turn of two centuries, he witnessed the enormous transformations that the world around him was undergoing. He was in constant motion, living almost simultaneously on two continents.
Early Years
Staś was born on December 13, 1893, in Warta, into a home shaped by Romantic patriotic values. He spent the first years of his adulthood between cosmopolitan Chicago and New York and the more classically European atmosphere of Kraków. After years marked by poverty and hunger, marriage to a woman from Chicago society introduced him to a more comfortable life in the capitals of Europe.
He bought a house in May-en-Multien, near Paris, as well as in the charming and peaceful village of Mięćmierz, near Kazimierz Dolny. Yet it was in Kraków that he transformed himself into Stach of Warta, using his fiery speeches to promote his own vision of Poland. Society, however, proved more resistant than clay in the Master’s hands, constantly wavering between admiration for his art and condemnation of his radical views.
These circumstances led, in 1928, to the creation of the artistic group known as the Tribe of the Horned Heart, later also referred to as Szukalski’s Tribe of the Horned Heart. Under Szukalski’s guidance, its members developed their own artistic potential while at the same time becoming supporters of his philosophy and art.
Nothing, however, ever eased Szukalski’s sense of rejection by his own nation. The hostility and lack of understanding he encountered ultimately broke his heart.
Marriage
His marriage was also an unhappy one. Helen Walker Szukalska filed for divorce in 1933. Stanisław Szukalski, however, found love again with Joan Lee Donovan, whom he married two years later.
World War II
The drama and brutality of the Second World War led Szukalski to reassess his views. From the 1940s until the end of his life, he searched through the artistic heritage of cultures from around the world for anthropological and linguistic features that, in his view, connected humanity, pointed to a shared primordial homeland — which he identified as Easter Island — and explained the existence of evil and oppressive regimes.
He called the system of thought he developed Zermatism. His analyses, collected in 42 volumes, were richly illustrated with more than 40,000 sketches, some of them executed with the aid of a magnifying glass.
Works
He created constantly, working across every medium available to him. The body of work produced over nearly 80 years of his official artistic career can be estimated at more than 700 works of art. Due to the turmoil of war and the communist regime in Poland, however, only a small fraction of the originals has survived to the present day.
Archives Szukalski
By twist of fate, he was discovered by Glenn Bray, who was fascinated by his talent and quickly earned his sympathy. Until the last days of his life, Szukalski created and enjoyed the company of the Californian community of artists of that time.
Glenn Bray and Lena Zwalve, by creating Archives Szukalski, took the first step toward saving Stanisław Szukalski from oblivion. Thanks to this, efforts were made to preserve, publish, and re-exhibit his works during the Master’s lifetime.
Stanisław Szukalski
Died on may 19, 1987
leaving behind the outstanding legacy of his life and a circle of friends. By decision of his heirs, his ashes and those of his wife Joan, who died in 1980, were scattered on Easter Island, which according to Szukalski was the homeland of all nations.