The work perfectly demonstrates the artist’s typical way of depicting nature transformed by his imagination. It also contains numerous concepts and treatments with which the author was fascinated since the beginning of his career. The idea of duality resounds here, visible in the mirror reflections and repetitions of a given motif, which one would look for in vain in a realistic landscape in the form and scale the painter adopted. The fantastic landscape is divided into two parts. Despite the individualisation of details in both of them, such as trees and rocks, the picture overall is organised by the axis of symmetry marked by the beam of light emerging upward from the central part of the composition. The rock formations take on anthropomorphic traits, becoming human busts in profile. The fire, clouds and the contrasting lights and colours heighten the apocalyptic atmosphere of the painting.

Michał Jachuła

translated by Paulina Bożek