Before the Dawn
Before the Dawn
Before the Dawn

Before the Dawn

Author: Stabrowski Kazimierz, 1869 - 1929

Created: 1913.

Material / technique: paper, pastel.

Dimensions: 47x65 cm.

Signature:  K. Stabrowski (in the bottom-right corner of the painting).

In this composition, the glow of the rising sun illuminates the space that becomes an important symbolic unit meaning-wise. Dawn reaches and lights up the most distance and most darkest depths of the world, which means that the composition is expressing a scenario of a battle between good and evil: the light slowly comes in and the darkness retreats. The first rays of light illuminate the large mound in the water. Immediately, Čiurlionis’ water mounds come to mind (Serenity [1904] and Sunset [1904]). Of course, everything here is slightly different, but both artists have the same motifs of the story that encode the idea of searching for an ideal world.

Reference:  ‘Kazimierz Stabrowski, the Teacher of M. K. Čiurlionis’. Kaunas: M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum, 2016, Kat. Nr.32, P. 100.  

Exhibitions: ‘Kazimierz Stabrowski, the Teacher of M. K. Čiurlionis’, 2015 September 24 - 2016 January 3, M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum, Kaunas; "The Break of Dawn. Lithuanian Visual Arts Prior to 1918", 10 May  2018 – 31 May 2019, 2018, M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, Kaunas.

Published: Kazimierz Stabrowski, the Teacher of M. K. Čiurlionis’. Kaunas: M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum, 2016, Kat. Nr.32, P. 100; “LOGOS”, 2021/106, “A Journal of Religion, Philosophy, Comparative Cultural Studies and Art”, 2021, P.130; Antanas Andrijauskas „Reflections of Ideas of Theosophical Philosophy of Art in Painting by Stabrauskas and Čiurlionis“, Lithuanian Culture Research Institute, 2021, Vilnius, P. 126.

Photographs: Kazimierz Stabrowski (1869–1929); display in the exhibition  "The Break of Dawn. Lithuanian Visual Arts Prior to 1918", 10 May 2018 – 31 May 2019, M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, Kaunas.