European Revivals Research Project

In 2009 the Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki launched the research project European Revivals. Its underlying idea is to reflect upon European national revivals by bringing together and analysing multifarious connections and correspondences, which helped shape the identities of modern European nations.

Towards the end of the nineteenth-century, European artists began to express a new profound interest in their unique local pasts and cultural inheritances. This was a discourse largely shaped by the desire within several countries for cultural and artistic, and ultimately social and economic, independence. Art historical scholarship on the subject has already been broadly established, but this joint project strives to examine the parallel phenomena from a wider-scale, international perspective.

The project’s aims are fostered by encouraging scholarly networking between academia and museum professionals by organising or supporting affiliating seminars and conferences, exploring different aspects of these phenomena. The project also plans to be manifested in publications and international exhibitions.

Return to Nature Conference

The conference organised by the Tatra Museum takes as its leading theme the return to nature, which manifested itself in visual arts, architecture and design, literature and music, philosophy and lifestyles around 1900. Rooted in the ideas of the 19th century thinkers and writers such as John Ruskin, it informed the Arts and Crafts and Back-to-the-Land Movements and parallel ideas comprehended as national revivals in central and northern Europe, all of which tapped into Romantic philosophy and imagination.

The return to nature took place both in art and in life, triggering the rise of the colonies of artists who, like the poet Godfrey Blount, believed that  country life is the only happy, healthy and human one.  In search of simple life and physical and spiritual regeneration painters, writers and composers settled down in the areas of natural beauty, such as the countryside around Lake Tuusula in Finland, the seaside village of Skagen in Denmark or the village of Zakopane in the Polish Tatras.

In the arts, this turn to nature translated itself, among others, into the representations of the natural world and order, not infrequently endowed with symbolic and metaphysical qualities. Nature was carefully studied by artists and the representations of life, growth, germination and cycles of seasons made their way into painting and sculpture. In design and applied arts nature was stylised and increasingly abstracted into decorative forms and patterns. Some plants and trees, such as the rowan tree or chestnut rose to prominence and the motif of the tree of life stood out as a powerful symbol. 

The three major topics that the conference seeks to address include:

• philosophical and theoretical ideas that underpinned the return to nature ca. 1900;
• the rise of artists' communities in the countryside in search of alternative ways of living;
• natural inspiration in arts, architecture and interior design of the time.

The conference will take place in Kraków with a one-day study trip to Zakopane. The conference fee is 220 PLN/55 EURO, in which a visit to Zakopane is included.  Students pay a discount fee of 60 PLN/15 EURO. Participants are required to organize and cover the costs of their travelling and accomodation. Participation in the sessions in Kraków is free of charge on prior registration. The deadline for registration is 10th September.

To mark the centenary of the death of Stanisław Witkiewicz (1851-1915), the 130th anniversary of the birth of his son, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, who is also known as 'Witkacy' (1885-1939), and to commemorate the remarkable achievements of these two artists, the Małopolska regional government and Zakopane's town council have proclaimed 2015 to be The Year of Stanisław and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz.