Epiphanies of Beauty. The Works of Wojciech Wencel

Wojciech Wencel constantly shows us the value of artistic conservatism, of classi-cal order combined with the best traditions of Romanticism. He does it over and over again, conscious that newer generations of readers keep emerging and that they may not remember the Polish patency of the papacy of John Paul II, a 20th century romanticist, a poet, a playwright, and the author of Letter to Artists in which art is defined as newer and newer epiphanies of beauty. [... ]
Wencel takes up a conscious game with literary coiwentions, juxtaposing neoroman-ticism, messianism and neo-classicism, universal Christian motives and the realities of Polish history. These works are;read in the context of romantic ideas which clas-sicise literary forms. It is worth looking for equivalents to these aesthetic efFects in symbolist painting, for example, in the works of Jacek Malczewski.