Povençal home. Helena Het Kwiatkowska and Dora Bianka, Polish artists in Southern France

Abstract

Through referring to various documents and source materials, this paper analyses the careers of two Polish painters, Helena Het Kwiatkowska (1882–1956) and Dora Bianka (1896–1979), who, during the interwar period, became successful and recognised not only in Paris but also in the Mediterranean region. Provence, understood broadly as the land of imagination, played an important role in lives and careers of both painters. In the 1930s, Kwiatkowska’s and Bianka’s Provençal homes were the visible proof of the strong bond between the two artists and Southern France. Het Kwiatkowska was strongly connected with the Alpes-Maritimes region as she lived near Chateauneuf de Grasse. Although Dora Bianka worked and exhibited her work in Marseille, she lived in Aix-en-Provence, the city of Paul Cézanne. The analysis the works of both painters through iconographic and artistic perspective allows to determine how their bonds with Southern France influenced their careers and paintings. The paper attempts at bringing attention to the forgotten Polish female painters whose works have only recently started to appear in Polish galleries and who deserve more detailed publications devoted to them.