Wlastimil Hofman (1881 Prague - 1970 Szklarska Poreba), God's Singer, 1920s.

oil, plywood, 50 × 35 cm
signed p. d.: Wlastimil Hofman
on the back notes on the origin of the painting: Sold/Jan Kurek/Kraków/ Bronowice Małe/No 378/Boży śpiewak/ address/Professor Vlastimil/Hofman/Kraków/ Spadzista street/ own villa

"I am a painter of thoughts and experiences"
Wlastimil Hofman
Hofman was a man of deep faith, hence religious paintings were particularly close to the artist, they are the most important part of his work. "Confession" (in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw) became his most famous painting, which in 1921 moved the Paris critics and on June 8 received the highest recognition and decoration, and Hofman a membership in the Societe Nationale de Beaux Arts in Paris (as the second Pole after Boznańska, who lived in Paris) (after B. Czajkowski, Portrait from Memory, Ossolińskis Publishing House 1971, p. 126). Hofman described his artistic credo as "service to God" . In his memoirs he wrote: "My art develops around prayer, around the contact of the human spirit with God [...] the prayer of the spirit and the body are the highest human manifestations, the most convenient for representation in art (Memoirs of the artist, 27 July 1915, quoted after E. Wolniewicz-Mierzwińska, Wlastimil Hofman - creativity until 1939, in Works or kitsch, ed. E. Grabska, T.S. Jaroszewski, Warsaw 1981, p. 390, p). "I convince myself more and more that the bottom of my soul is religious, so the bottom of my art I should bind to the spirit of Christian medieval art (Diary, August 23, 1923). The artist wrote repeatedly about the need and mission of religious painting: "I have come to the conviction that a great and serious subject compels, as it were, by itself to express itself monumentally in the simplest possible way, so I will try as often as possible, if possible, to reject generic subjects that do not lead the artist to such heights of style and choose serious and great subjects already in themselves. Evangelical style is important in a picture" (Memoir, March 10, 1914). In the Illustrated Daily Courier of September 28, 1925, we read that "Hofman, if he reaches for the religious element, will bring out from the soul a wide scale of the deepest and sincere feeling ". The greatest artistic value of his works is the strength and tension in bringing out expression as a counterpart to the rich scale of human feelings." Stanislaw Przybyszewski called Hofman a "Polish Fra Angelico" and Bunikiewicz wrote that "his paintings are the most perfect expression of Polish Christianity in the visual arts" (W. Bunikiewicz, Wlastimil Hofman (on the 25th anniversary of his work). Exhibition in Garlinski Salon, "Ivyszcz" 1928, no. 17, p. 12).