Between earth and heaven: The art of Nikifor Krynicki

Nikifor was of Lemko origin. We do not know where his name or nickname came from, although it stuck to him from the very early years of his life. It was not until 1963 that he was officially given the surname "Krynicki", which sealed the administrative normalization of his status.

In 2003 a court in Muszyna ruled that Nikifor's real name and surname was Epifaniusz (Epifan) Drowniak. It can therefore be assumed that for decades Nikifor had been denied his primary identity or it was not officially recognized. For the worse, Nikifor was resettled numerous times during the Operation Vistula. As a result of political storms, he was sent, among others, to Szczecin, far from his home Krynica Zdrój (which is indicative of his paintings' motifs from that period that presented piers, sea, beaches). The painter, disregarding the decrees, whether he did it consciously or not, returned to his little homeland by all available means, although this often contributed to a significant deterioration of his health and condemned him to suffer the fate of a beggar and an outcast. Undoubtedly, the ethnicity of Nikifor Krynicki caused him problems of a legal and civic nature, he became a tiny part of the historical and political turmoil. However, his Lemko "genotype" spiritually enriched him as a man and artist, who identified himself with the region and assimilated its heritage.

Nikifor was a self-taught artist, and the orthodox church was his artistic "academy". Although his skills were not honed at any institution or by any academic authority, the "Matejko from Krynica" was endowed with innate predispositions to draw, compose colors, work with perspective and symmetry. His painting legacy is impressive also in terms of the number of the created compositions, although he never had an unrestricted access to the most necessary painting materials. Nikifor painted mainly watercolors and gouaches, he also made pencil sketches (especially during the last period of his life, when he was no longer able to color his works). The resulting paintings are not only demonstrations of Nikifor's aesthetic predilections and his thematic interests but also a source of knowledge about his biography, the times when he was less fortunate or when he did slightly better. It is indicated by, among others, the manner with which he applied paint on his works. When Nikifor lived in poverty, he was economical with watercolor paints. He bought them in minimal quantities and worked with one color, making the most of it. In times of greater prosperity, the artist did not bother to be sparing with material, he applied thick, undiluted layers of paint. Due to the lack of financial resources and problems with speech, Nikifor did not have access to professional and good-quality utensils. He created on random pieces of paper, wrapping paper, old posters, sheets from school notebooks, papers from courts, cardboards, cigarette boxes, photographic paper, tracing paper. Nikifor's painting workshop was also impecunious, as it consisted of only a few boxes with ordinary watercolor paints and crayons, a few pencils and brushes, and a wooden case for these tools. It was this suitcase that became one of the most important motifs in Nikifor's self-portraits and, over time, his hallmark on the streets of Krynica. This chest/suitcase constituted a kind of safe for Nikifor, in which he padlocked all his most valuable things, that is his paintings. According to the painter's biographers, it happened that he sometimes slept in this chest, as he had nowhere else to rest. 

Nikifor frequently devoted his drawings and paintings to depictions on the border of religion and magic. These metaphysical threads in his worldview played a remarkably important role, due to the artist's ethnic origin and certain physical and mental disability. Researchers suggest that Nikifor took up religious themes in his art also intentionally, believing that painting the Guardian Angel or the Mother of God is in fact creating artistic amulets that would provide him with "additional" protection. Religious motives were also a form of atonement. Undoubtedly, contact with religion, both through painting and directly in the temples, was a kind of liberation for the primitivist from Krynica. When painting, he would fall into an isolating trance and when participating in a church service, he did not have to speak and expose his speech deficits. It can therefore be concluded that creating the "holy pictures" was an attempt to extend the duration of the state that gave Nikifor a sense of freedom, dignity, and care.

The coexistence of religious and magical threads in Nikifor's art includes both the representations of saints, which were expressive, precisely outlined, with clearly marked eyes and eyebrows, painted in nondogmatic colors with a yellow halo, as well as architectural motifs that the artist sketched from nature, based on postcards and other prints, or from memory. In an almost magical manner, urban and architectural views are at times deprived of the human element, being unrealistically depopulated, and other times full of quasi-portrait and genre depictions. Nikifor (un)consciously takes on the role of the sacred and profane spheres' creator, in a way assuming the role of the Great Architect or the Creator who manages his Theatrum mundi.