‘Vilnius in Ignacy Pinkas’ Colour Autolithographs’, cover

Shortly after the end of the First World War, early in 1919, war broke out between the Soviet Union and Poland. The Bolsheviks wanted to take the Western territories that had previously belonged to the Russian Empire. The Red Army quickly moved west, and in March 1919 it occupied Vilnius. Poland joined the fray, and its army launched an offensive to take Vilnius back from the Bolsheviks. On 19 April, the Poles marched ceremoniously into the city, with Marshal Józef Piłsudski astride his horse. The Kraków-born artist Ignacy Pinkas (1888–1935) had joined the ranks of the Polish Legions in 1914, and he marched into Vilnius with them in 1919. He returned to the city in 1928, and made the series of lithographs Wilno w avtolitografjach barwnych Ignacego Pinkasa (Vilnius in Ignacy Pinkas’ Colour Autolithographs), which was printed in Kraków at Pruszynski’s printing press. The series was published to mark the tenth anniversary since Vilnius was won back from the Bolsheviks, and therefore it had a political and ideological significance. The series has an introduction written by the art historian Marian Morełowski, and a lithograph of the tower of Vilnius University observatory with a quote from Piłsudski’s 1928 speech to a congress of legionaries in Vilnius: ‘The dear town, the dear stone walls, which cradled me as a baby, which taught me to love the majesty of truth [...] a town of our great culture and the might of the old state [...] All the beauty of my soul has been caressed by Vilnius.’

Shortly after the end of the First World War, early in 1919, war broke out