The Church of St Catherine

Series ‘Vilnius in Ebonite’, 1928.

In the preface to the book, Kaliszczak explained why he chose the modern material: ‘The radio age came to Vilnius, which is beautiful for its antiquity, and when I was constructing a radio set and the cutter went into an ebonite plate, I was struck by the idea of creating Vilnius in ebonite, and here it is. Nobody had this material when I was making the series, and I haven’t heard of any graphic artists who have used it. But ebonite has its advantages, in its technical qualities, and its cost (15 mites [grozsy in Polish] for a three-millimetre-thick plate of one square centimetre). I believe it is similar in hardness to a steel plate, or at least a zinc plate. Gramophone records are strong, and they are made of ebonite too ...’

But printing with ebonite did not become a popular technique with artists, and Kaliszczak’s work remained a one-off experiment. Having chosen a new material, Kaliszczak studied its potential, and achieved a dual stylistic effect. Some prints were realistic, with finely engraved lines, and details of the city emerged mysteriously through the darkness in the pale chiaroscuro of dusk. Other prints, on the contrary, were expressive, roughly carved in contrasting black and white; their compositions were dynamic, and the shapes were broken. In these works by Kaliszczak, two different tendencies in the art of the first half of the 20th century are evident, the already fading Neo-Romanticism and the emerging Expressionism.

Series ‘Vilnius in Ebonite’, 1928