The painting is part of Krawczyk’s interest in landscape — a theme he had consistently taken up since the second half of the 1950s — this time seascapes. In 1964 — the year in which the painting was created — the artist was already developing the formula of the so-called spatial realism. The depiction of a harbour enclosed in a rather tight frame consists of four fishermen’s houses, a fragment of a quay with water and a fishing boat. The small scale of the architecture, together with the detailed rendering of the building details, including window and door frames, roof tiles and brick façades, evoke a fairy-tale setting associated with the world of a child’s imagination. The manner of the ‘postcard’ framing and the convention of naïve painting further enhance the fairy-tale effect. An analogous motif appears in Krawczyk’s earlier painting Port of Szczecin (1958), from the collection of the National Museum in Szczecin. Fishing Port from the Zachęta collection was most likely inspired by a photograph of one of the German or Dutch ports.

Michał Jachuła

translated by Paulina Bożek