The Art Nouveau Charm of Industrial Upper Silesia

[ text Irma Kozina, photos Adrian Larisz ]

What does an Art Nouveau building look like in Katowice, Bytom, Chorzów and Bielsko-Biała? Similar and different at the same time. An average passer-by does not usually distinguish between the facade of a historicising neo-style building, ornamented with elements referring to Gothic, Baroque or Renaissance and the buildings designed in the style called Secession in Vienna, Art Nouveau in Paris and Jugendstil in Berlin. The style which, at least in principles, broke with the past and aimed at creating new aesthetics, new artistic language.

For some, Art Nouveau is a style of asymmetry and undulating lines bringing to mind a woman’s waist or her long, curly hair. For others, it will be associated with geometrisation and abstracting from the forms derived from nature. Which approach is correct? Both of them.

There are a lot of variations of the style which between 1890 – 1910 conquered almost the whole world. In some places, young Art Nouveau artists valued the ability to create forms by means of geometric abstraction with almost no reference to the natural world. Others pointed to the vitality and power of lush nature, emphasising the organic character of biosphere where flora and fauna reveal themselves in an almost infinite variation of shapes and colours. One thing was certain: they would no longer slavishly imitate historical styles. What really mattered was the attempt to create the synthesis of arts, to combine all fields of art in one work and to achieve the symbiosis of architecture, painting, sculpture and craft.

We sometimes happen to wait, a bit impatiently, at the bus stop in Mickiewicz Street in Katowice. Our eyes involuntarily turn to the facades of the houses on the opposite side of the road. Suddenly we notice the distinctively elegant forms of the balcony balustrades in the building with the number 14 over its entrance. Let us try to describe them. It will not be an easy task to reconstruct the pattern repeated six times on the thin metal fitting. It takes some thinking to discover the association with the five buds of thistles on winding stems of which the middle one seems to be covered by a leaf blade. Or maybe they are buds of a young, unbloomed dandelion? Concavity rhythmically competes with convexity, the biological origin of the ornament loses itself in the repeated geometry of waving lines. Abstraction or reality? A world of human imagination or imitation of the really existing natural environment? Both. The profusion of decoration, where shapes of flowers, leaves, grass, human heads and animal torsos have been filtered through unhindered imagination. It is, indeed, the imagination of Art Nouveau craftsmen that brought to existence the bird with its intimidating, open beak, terrible, piercing eyes and wings made of palmettes and floral buds or these unusual floral owls which decorate some of the window heads of the recently beautifully renovated building at 14 Mickiewicz Street with the year 1905 as the erection date inscribed on its middle gable.

The once refined interior of the building’s hall looks less perfect today. The gently widening, inviting set of steps, starting with a rising, slender stem of a flowery lantern, makes you think of the staircase in Victor Horta’s Hôtel Tassel in Brussels. Although the tiles in the hall at 14 Mickiewicz Street may evoke admiration for their unique shade of cobalt blue, delicately framed with stripes of Pompeian red and a frieze of stylised pansies, the window at the end of the viewing axis is patched with glass panes that clash with the whole. The once painstakingly chiselled mosaic floor is cracked and worn, hardly able to remind of the former splendour of this place.

As we can read in specialist literature the house was built by the architect Josef Stellmach, according to plans drawn by Georg Zimmermann. Until 1939 it housed a print shop and a publishing house of “Böhm Brothers” as well as an alcohol shop belonging to Arthur Schlesinger. The consul of Czechoslovakia is sometimes mentioned as being one of the house’s noble tenants. That is a shame that the extremely successful renovation of the facade, with its suggestive, three-sided projections, was not accompanied by the renovation of the hall which only in a few places retains its former glory.

At the beginning of the last century Bytom was referred to as a European city with the largest number of Art Nouveau buildings. What has been left of them? Undoubtedly, a few unique architectural gems. Their uniqueness consists partly in their exceptional artistic expression. They are not multiplied examples of world trends but individual contributions of local architects to the development of the style. Especially unique are the works of Karl Brugger whose activity falls on the time when Georg Brüning – the acclaimed mayor of all time – administered the city. In his architectural projects Karl Brugger did not break categorically with the tradition of the past historical periods and was inspired by local baroque forms, nevertheless, because of the smooth shapes of the upper parts of the roofs that refer to Baroque as well as because of the colourful ceramic facing, the architect managed to achieve the individuality that allowed him to compete with the most prominent representatives of the trend in Munich or Vienna. One of his realisations is the villa built for mayor Brüning at today’s 4 Legionów Street. It has rather modest mass and its facade is adorned with a very decorative representation of Bytom coat of arms, surrounded with young oak branches. On the one hand, it alludes to the merits of the house’s occupant, on the other, it refers to the activities of Bytom local government which contributed to the funding of a sewage treatment plant – a facility that was hard to find in Europe of that time. In the city, there are a lot of other buildings with beautifully decorated elevations. Some of them are covered with geometric patterns, others feature ornaments that emphasise their architectural sections.

Even without searching the archives one can risk making the assumption that the facades are the work of Brugger. They include the Royal Institute of Hygiene (today’s Municipal Sanitary- Epidemiological Station) at 25 Moniuszko Street and the magnificent school building at 1 Sikorski Square.

Hundreds of Art Nouveau buildings in the cities of Upper Silesia usually repeat decorative motifs or the stylisation which could be found in the leading European centres -the expression of a widespread fashion. One can sometimes get the impression that ready-made architectural elements such as griffins, flowers, birds or human heads were bought per item from building shops in Germany or Austria in order to be fixed in place with mortar. More independent achievements of outstanding artists include the kitchen in the hospital of Górnośląska Spółka Bracka in Królewska Huta (today’s Chorzów). Over the two entrance porch, in the spherically triangular wall of the gable end, there is a window, framed with a wavy rim and supported by two dynamic spirals at the sides. Its horizontal muntins bend upward like well-kneaded yeast pastry. This specific suggestion of movement, achieved my means of waving, convex and concave lines is one the most typical practices of the Art Nouveau architecture. Unfortunately, the uniqueness of the building has not so far made any difference as to the state of its preservation. The old kitchen has irretrievably lost its former glitter.

Lots of beautiful Art Nouveau houses were demolished in the socialism period, when functionalism was valued, a great number of them is still deteriorating since their owners cannot afford the restoration of the former glory of their fragile architectural details. Very often no attempt is made to save the time-consuming stone or stucco ornaments, but the whole process of renovation is limited to the restoration of old paintings. Exactly the same thing happened during the renovation of a dilapidating building at 60 Tarnopol Street in Zabrze Mikulczyce. Its worn out, modest elevation does not make you expect the beauties of its staircase. Once in the entrance hall, you are surprised to discover a very special representation of the four seasons shown as ladies attired in gauzy, long dresses painted against a background of a rural landscape. The Spring, holding a blooming apple tree twig, looks especially charming with her pale pink, satin robe winding in the grass covered with white dew. The figure resembles those from Japanese wood engravings and reveals the source of inspiration so typical for German Jugendstil.

The examples of Art Nouveau facades attacting our attention to the motifs of stone owls, griffins, woman heads in diadems, Celtic braid and other fanciful decorations make an endless list. Although many buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were pulled down long time ago, quite a lot of them can be find in almost every city of the densely populated industrial agglomeration. Just take a stroll along the streets of the Old Towns, look up and immerse yourself in the play of artistic imagination and feel the irresistible charm of the style in which hundreds of local buildings were adorned. The ornaments transform architecture into a fairy-tale world of symbols and myths, that can attract not only the lovers of the building art.

IRMA KozinA PhD – art historian. She studied at the Art History Institute of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Since 1988 she has worked in the Department of Art History of the Social Science Faculty at the University of Silesia in Katowice. In 1997 she received her PhD at the University of Wroclaw, presenting a thesis on palaces and castles in Upper Silesia built from 1850 to 1914. She received her PhD degree at the University of Warsaw in 2007 for the thesis „Chaos and order. Dilemmas of industrial architecture in Upper Silesia in the years 1763-1955.” She specializes in research on modern and contemporary art and is interested in the methods of interpretation of works of art and urban history.

From BEDRIFT SUMMER 2012.