Marian Mokwa (1889, Malary – 1987, Sopot), Łódź at Sea

oil on canvas, 50 x 60.5 cm

Exhibited and reproduced:
- Marian Mokwa, Jubilee Exhibition Catalog, National Museum in Gdańsk, July–August 1979, (catalog cover)

Provenance:
Purchased from the artist; has been in the family collection ever since.

This painting opened Marian Mokwa’s jubilee exhibition at the National Museum in Gdańsk in 1979 (and appeared on the catalog cover).

“The seascapes painted by Mokwa have the same compelling style as his depictions of people. The painter loves what he captures in his art. These works tell us much about the artist’s ever-powerful experiences […] His painted sea lives, speaks, rustles, and roars. […] Mokwa knows all the phases of the sea’s life, all its moments—its laborious, industrious day—as well as he knows himself. Every whisper of the sea, not understood by everyone, he knows how to transcribe with his brush onto the pages of its life.” (Krzysztof Wójcicki, “Conversations with Mokwa,” Gdynia 1997, p. 103)