Wathing sky

In this painting, one can distinguish six frontally depicted figures: one woman (the artist’s spouse) and five men (one of them is Pręgowski himself). They are standing in two rows, their heads lifted upward, watching the sky stretched above their heads. The horizon is low beyond the edge of the painting. The deep blue surface of the midnight sky serves as the only backdrop. Its monotony is disturbed only by the full moon placed in the top left corner of the image. This spatial strategy has isolated the human figures from any potential reality they could be part of, since we see them totally captivated by the object of their scrutiny most likely beyond the image itself. The motif of watching the sky – here slightly trivialized if not mocked, whilst traditionally given more respect and associated with deep-thinking and existential pondering – was achieved by choosing casually-dressed, so-called ordinary people you see every day walking down the street and turning them into the main characters of this image (significantly one of the men is wearing a t-shirt with the word “street” on it). It’s not the moon they’re staring at. In fact, the moon is behind them so we see them in an obscured manner against the source of light, which is a premeditated manipulation of the romantic legacy. The palette is dominated by the deep blue of the sky which casts its reflection onto every other object. The brush-strokes were applied in a similar direction and remain strongly visible. [E. Jarosz]