Triple self-portrait

Information

Department

Department of contemporary folk and non-professional art

Technique

Watercolor

Material

Paper

Copyright classification

Description

"Triple Self-Portrait" is one of Nikifor's most famous works and is one of the few large-format paintings that the artist painted in the 1920s. It is probably the painter's largest surviving painting.

The title was not given by Nikifor, this name was established in the literature. It remains an open question whether the painting shows the artist himself in three figures, or whether there are two other painters standing next to the central, most important figure, which is undoubtedly Nikifor; one from Warsaw and the other from Lviv /Roman Turin ?/, as the inscriptions on the painting suggest.

In the years of Nikifor's youth, in the interwar period, there were always several street photographers working in Krynica who earned money by taking souvenir photos of patients. Nikifor, as a characteristic figure of the spa, was often photographed by them. One of the preserved archival photos taken by an unknown photographer in Krynica in the 1920s. century, shows the then young Nikifor with this painting.

Zbigniew Wolanin

Photos from the archives of the District Museum in Nowy Sącz