... This sort of realism stirs our emotions; it is palpable, alive. Looking at Jan Chrzan’s paintings, we know the time of day captured on canvas, we feel how strong is the wind, we see leaves gently moving in an endless spectrum of colours. The artist used to say: I am trying to paint for thousands of people – paintings like a song, like a simple melody… My landscapes are romantic. My pictures are realistic. Everyone knows about that. I have to convince the viewer that bushes can be purple, and the sky can be pink. The realist painter is responsible for each detail. Yet, such authenticity is not tantamount to an imitation of nature. Much is still left unsaid, as if the artist is inviting us to paint with him.

Jan Chrzan’s landscapes, as indeed his entire oeuvre, form a kind of story about the artist and his perception of art. The mature style of the solemn landscapes of the pre-war years gave way in the 1940s and 1950s to a greater sense of restlessness in his artistic search. The texture of the paintings became much thicker, while the content, nature, seemed almost frozen, as if waiting to be liberated. Then the artist started to add more and more light to his works. In the second half of the 1960s, the sun seemed to shine like never before, at least in his paintings. As we look at the landscapes of Serpelice-on-the-Bug, or Okocim and its environs, we are overwhelmed by the intensity of the colour, emphasised through the light expression. The 1970s saw the consolidation of a certain kind of style: a still rich, yet restrained use of colour, combined with free brushstrokes, which gave Chrzan’s landscapes an impression of remarkable lightness. It seemed  as if nothing could change this painterly technique that he had honed over decades. And yet, the 1980s brought another surprise. Chrzan added light to works painted many years previously, introduced human figures into landscapes and enriched them with sharp colours and contrasts as well as bold compositions born of the imagination. All these experiments brought a new wave of emotion, movement and life to Chrzan’s painting.

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