Zakopane Style and German Occupation

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As Renée MacIntosh is to Glasgow Arts and Crafts, Stanisław Witkiewicz is To Zakopane style. In era and aspiration.



Willa Koliba was built for Zygmunt Gnatowski. Gnatowski needed a building where he could store his collection of ethnographic artifacts. Originally he aimed to build a simple hut based on existing Tatra architecture, but was convinced by Stanisław Witkiewicz, painter, to have a house in the newly emerging Zakopane style built instead. Witkiewicz, already a well-known artist, draughtsman and playwright, was eager to introduce a new local style of architecture to the region when he noticed that wealthy local residents began erecting houses in the Swiss folk style. Witkiewicz was aiming to introduce a national variety of rustic architecture to Poland, and based his sketches on local decorative motifs. Sketches of Koliba Villa were made in 1891 and it was then built by local workers in 1892–1893 in Zakopane at Kościeliska street.



This is the time that Art Nouveau was emerging in Europe.

Zakopane was also a centre/colony for artists at this point in history and there was much political and cultural debate.

Today we visited four timber houses which are now museums, each influenced or designed by Witkiewicz. Willa Koliba featured dozens of the caricatures of the artists and personalities by Kazimierz Sichulski who was paid in food and board for the paintings of a short period of visits at the start of the 20th century.



Between the wars Zakopane became the snow sports capital of the world, because it had style and café culture as well as snow and mountains.



My favourite museum was Willa Oksza which featured art works from the 1900 - 1950 with a visiting exhibition of contemporary installation work on the first floor.

We’ve asked a few people about the Zakopane in the Second World War and the tales told are of it being a retreat in the hills for German military officers, and a centre for their refreshment, planning and debate.

And in Willa Oksza we found a German poster from 1942 advertising a snow sports festival, tickets available from Adolf Hitler Platz, Krakow.

Interestingly, there was also a poster in Israeli advertising an international snow sports competition from 1927.

Zakopa houses are still being built in heavy timber, many featuring wooden roof tiles, steep roof inclines and ornamental fretwork.

Tradition dictated a specific interior lay out, e,g, a Black Chamber (smokey kitchen area), White Chamber (the parlour or sitting room in Geordie culture) used only for Christmas and birthdays, and the Large Vestibule where household grind took place (e.g. quern and barrel storage).

Roof beams, shelving, furniture and door frames feature wood carved patterns.

The main Tatra museum is built of stone with less defined Zakopane style. Half the ground floor is taken up with representations of the chambers, and the other half with felted costumes, leather work, wood work, fiddles and other instruments.

The upper floor exhibited geology, flora and fauna.

A lack of English translation and old style curation (glass boxes of stuffed stuff) made this my least captivating experience of the day.



We just preempted the ‘vernisage’ opening of an exhibition on the first floor of the ‘Bazar’. Glasses of wine were laid out for a do celebrating the artist’s work of woven fabrics. Many in circular form (woven on some sort of cone?) and the rest as long vertical banners featuring fibre optics interwoven with black and white yarns of different materials. Stunning work.

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