Struggle
Sculpture by Stanisław Szukalski as featured in the eponymous Netflix documentary, Struggle. Created in 1917, this piece depicts the Struggle between quality and quantity as the four fingers attack the thumb, the opposing fingers turning against one another failing to recognize they are but one. Struggle can be interpreted as representing the infighting of the great powers of Europe during the First World War which was raging at the time, the hand representing greater European civilization, the individual fingers representing its constituent nations, locked in a struggle against each other, blind to their antediluvian kinship. Last, 9/9 edition of Szukalski’s original sculpture casted at the Decker Foundry.
Stanisław Szukalski was a renowned sculptor and nationalist ideologue from Poland noted for his mythological and political works of art, particularly concerning Poland’s ancient Slavic past. He was also renowned for the lifelike accuracy of the anatomical details seen in his works, which he learned to sculpt by dissecting his father’s body (whom he held in great respect) post-mortem at the morgue. Being anti-clerical, anti-communistic and anti-semitic, he founded a politico-artistic movement known as the Tribe of the Horned Heart, centered around Polish artists who sought inspiration from the pre-Christian, pagan history of Poland, just as his works often did. As part of his political programme that sought to supplant Catholicism with Slavic paganism, Szukalski suggested replacing churches with so-called Duchtynia, a place of worship of ancient heroes and gods from Slavic mythology.
Szukalski was officially endorsed by the nationalist government of Poland at the time who viewed the dramatic mythological imagery of his works as an invaluable asset in constructing a new national mythos for Poland. Most of his works were destroyed during the German blitz of 1939 and the ensuing occupation.
Beginning in 1940, Szukalski devoted his later years attempting to unravel the mysteries of human prehistory and the formation and shaping of languages, faiths, customs, and arts across the many civilizations through deciphering the mythological origins of geographical names, gods, and symbols that have survived in varying cultural forms. He termed his theory Zermatism, which claimed all human culture derived from post-deluge Easter Islanders who settled in Zermatt, and that in all human languages one could find traces of the original, ancient mother-tongue of mankind. He claimed humanity was locked in an eternal struggle with the Sons of Yeti (Yetinsyny), the offspring of Yeti and humans, who had enslaved humanity from time immemorial. Szukalski used his considerable artistic talents to illustrate his theories, which, despite their lack of scientific merit, have gained a cult following largely on their aesthetic value.
The ideological congurence and aesthetic quality of his works and their potential propaganda value did not go unnoticed by the Nazis. Being a Polish fascist himself, Szukalski was a great admirer of Benito Mussolini and sculpted the awe-inspiring Remussolini (1932) in the Duce’s honor. However, these feelings did not extend to the Germans. A humorous anecdote exists wherein Szukalski was commissioned by a German official to produce a sculpture of Hitler. In response, Szukalski is said to have sent the Nazi official a drawing of Hitler in a tutu.
This episode goes to show that, contrary to popular belief, Fascism and National Socialism are distinct ideologies that differ in certain crucial aspects. In a 1933 interview, Guido Jung, a Jewish a member of Mussolini’s Grand Council of Fascism (what some would incorrectly presume to be an oxymoron) compared the ideological maturity of Nazism to Fascism as being between that of “an infant to a ten-year-old boy”.
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Sculpture by Stanisław Szukalski as featured in the eponymous Netflix documentary, Struggle. Created in 1917, this piece depicts the Struggle between quality and quantity as the four fingers attack the thumb, the opposing fingers turning against one another failing to recognize they are but one. Struggle can be interpreted as representing the infighting of the great powers of Europe during the First World War which was raging at the time, the hand representing greater European civilization, the individual fingers representing its constituent nations, locked in a struggle against each other, blind to their antediluvian kinship. Last, 9/9 edition of Szukalski’s original sculpture casted at the Decker Foundry.
Stanisław Szukalski was a renowned sculptor and nationalist ideologue from Poland noted for his mythological and political works of art, particularly concerning Poland’s ancient Slavic past. He was also renowned for the lifelike accuracy of the anatomical details seen in his works, which he learned to sculpt by dissecting his father’s body (whom he held in great respect) post-mortem at the morgue. Being anti-clerical, anti-communistic and anti-semitic, he founded a politico-artistic movement known as the Tribe of the Horned Heart, centered around Polish artists who sought inspiration from the pre-Christian, pagan history of Poland, just as his works often did. As part of his political programme that sought to supplant Catholicism with Slavic paganism, Szukalski suggested replacing churches with so-called Duchtynia, a place of worship of ancient heroes and gods from Slavic mythology.
Szukalski was officially endorsed by the nationalist government of Poland at the time who viewed the dramatic mythological imagery of his works as an invaluable asset in constructing a new national mythos for Poland. Most of his works were destroyed during the German blitz of 1939 and the ensuing occupation.
Beginning in 1940, Szukalski devoted his later years attempting to unravel the mysteries of human prehistory and the formation and shaping of languages, faiths, customs, and arts across the many civilizations through deciphering the mythological origins of geographical names, gods, and symbols that have survived in varying cultural forms. He termed his theory Zermatism, which claimed all human culture derived from post-deluge Easter Islanders who settled in Zermatt, and that in all human languages one could find traces of the original, ancient mother-tongue of mankind. He claimed humanity was locked in an eternal struggle with the Sons of Yeti (Yetinsyny), the offspring of Yeti and humans, who had enslaved humanity from time immemorial. Szukalski used his considerable artistic talents to illustrate his theories, which, despite their lack of scientific merit, have gained a cult following largely on their aesthetic value.
The ideological congurence and aesthetic quality of his works and their potential propaganda value did not go unnoticed by the Nazis. Being a Polish fascist himself, Szukalski was a great admirer of Benito Mussolini and sculpted the awe-inspiring Remussolini (1932) in the Duce’s honor. However, these feelings did not extend to the Germans. A humorous anecdote exists wherein Szukalski was commissioned by a German official to produce a sculpture of Hitler. In response, Szukalski is said to have sent the Nazi official a drawing of Hitler in a tutu.
This episode goes to show that, contrary to popular belief, Fascism and National Socialism are distinct ideologies that differ in certain crucial aspects. In a 1933 interview, Guido Jung, a Jewish a member of Mussolini’s Grand Council of Fascism (what some would incorrectly presume to be an oxymoron) compared the ideological maturity of Nazism to Fascism as being between that of “an infant to a ten-year-old boy”.
