Styl ilustracji Edwarda Okunia w czasopiśmie „Chimera"

Abstract

In 1901-1907, Edward Okuń was the illustrator of “Chimera”, a Warsaw literary and artistic magazine. In his work, he yielded to the influence of secession and to the climate of symbolism. When illustrating literary works, he omitted their literal meanings, in favour of their synthetic generalizations, and he treated their contents only as an inspiration of original artistic visions. In his pictures, he visualized those text fragments and motifs which were characterized by extreme emotions, e.g. sorrow, despair, euphoria. In his compositions, Okuń used imagery drawing upon both symbolism (fantastic visions of longing, spiritual travel, death), and impressionism (graphic expression of the emotions hidden in the creations of the characters), formally utilizing achievements of secession, tradition of pre-Raphaelites, and elements of Japanese art. Thus, he created unique illustrations kept within the symbolic- fantastic trend. The article presents graphic transpositions of the literary contents, based on the examples of Okun’s illustrations to the following works: J. Zayer’s King Kofetua, A. Lange’s Ponder- ings, T. Micinski’s In the Darkness of the Stars, B. Leśmian’s A Fairy Tale of the Lord’s Knight, and J. Kasprowicz’s./wi/ay, published in “Chimera”.