An international festival that is set to run until October this year was launched in Krakow yesterday celebrating a fabled stretch of the Carpathians known as the ‘Huculszczyzna’, or Hutsul lands.
The picturesque region, which currently lies in Ukraine but lay within Poland’s pre-war borders, is famed for the richness of its culture, from music to handicrafts to folklore.
Highlanders from the region have their own dialect, most similar to Ukrainian, with Polish and Romanian elements. They are Greek Catholic in faith. The highlanders are known in the wider world for their specific breed of horses, the short legs of which are able to negotiate the mountain passes.
On the High Uplands
The festival, entitled ‘Slavic Atlantis’, will see dozens of events in both Poland and Ukraine, bringing to life the highland culture that has so transfixed outsiders for generations.
The festivities were launched at the Krakow branch of the National Museum on Thursday evening, where a wide-ranging exhibition, ‘On the High Uplands: Art of the Hutsul Region – Hutsulshchyna in Art’, is being staged.
As of the late nineteenth century, artists journeyed to the remote region, painting the exotically-attired inhabitants as worthy, mystical folk living in harmony with nature.
In Poland, the turn of the nineteenth century was marked by what was dubbed 'Chlopomania' (Peasant Mania) in artistic circles. Poets and painters proclaimed that the peasantry offered the key to the future of Poland, which was then divided amongst Austria, Russia and Prussia.
In several instances artists married peasant girls, principally in the Krakow region.
The National Museum’s show is dedicated to the memory of Stanislaw Vincenz (1888-1971), a celebrated Polish scholar who did much to popularise the culture of the region. Vincenz passed away in exile forty years ago, and he and his wife were ultimately laid to rest in Krakow in 1991.
His curious book of folklore and reverie was translated into English in the 1950s, under the title On the High Uplands, a name that is echoed in the current show.
‘Slavic Atlantis’, which is being spearheaded by Justyna and Piotr Klapyta, runs until 22 October. (nh/jb)