Władysław Podlacha (1875-1951)

Podlacha studied history, art history, logic and the methodology of sciences at the University of Lvov. After college, whilst working as a high school teacher, he undertook, in the region of Bukowina, pioneering fieldwork on the Late Byzantine wall paintings found in a then almost completely unknown group of Orthodox churches. He published his first few articles on the paintings as well as a monograph, which became his doctoral dissertation. After further studies with A. Goldschmidt and W. Weisbach in Berlin, he qualified as a university lecturer at the University of Lvov. From then on he was permanently linked with this institution as professor and leader of the lively humanistic centre which formed around the two departments of art history. He also lectured during the Second World War: under Soviet occupation at the Ukrainian University in Lvov, and under German occupation – at the secret Polish university in the same city. Following the incorporation of Lvov into the Soviet Union, he was deported and moved to Gliwice, where he organized from scratch the department of art history at the newly established Polish university in Wrocław. He specialized in medieval painting, and his publications in this area related to the major illuminated codices in Poland, as well as to book illumination in Silesia. The main areas of Podlacha’s research were the theoretical foundations and methods of art history, which for decades formed the bulk of his lectures and seminars, as well as being the chief theme of his long-awaited book, which was to be his opus vitae; accepted for publication (in 1949), it was rejected by the communist authorities for political and ideological reasons.