Alicja Halicka (1894 Krakow- 1975 Paris), In the river port, after 1945

oil, canvas, 50 × 61 cm
Signed l. d.: "Halicka"

"I am immensely interested in architecture, issues of perspective and spatial solutions. No wonder, for so many years I lived and worked with cubist. Nevertheless, my painting does not belong to any school. I am neither a Cubist, nor a naturalist, nor an Impressionist, nor a Surrealist. I simply want to express poeticism, and I want it to arise not from literature, not from the subject, but from the visual content of the painting." (H. Kowzan, A Fairy Tale of Colors, "World" 1956 No. 41, p. 1.) "From the 1930s virtually until the end of her career, Halitskaya's painting will be based on line, on drawing, with which she creates her world - unreal, fairy-tale-like, although based on recognizable motifs. It is a world of poetry projected onto paper and canvas."
(K. Zagrodzki, "Alicja Halicka," Masters of E'cole de Paris series, Warsaw 2011, p. 33.)

Landscape, in particular urban views, began to dominate the artist's work from the 1930s. The painter was, as it were, forced by her husband, Louis Marcoussis - also a Cubist - to abandon her otherwise successful and critically well-received Cubist compositions and find a new path of artistic expression. The first "landscapes" appeared in a series of gouaches that Halitskaya brought back from her trip to Kazimierz in 1919-1921, but they served as backgrounds for representations. In the 1930s she turned her interest to the architecture and streets of Paris. From then on, the somewhat unreal, lyrically atmospheric cityscapes would be the hallmark of Halitskaya's work.