Portrait of Zofia Szafrańska

In 1949, Poland - then called the Polish People's Republic - was recovering and rebuilding after WWII.  The country was under the leadership of the Polish United Workers Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR), a political party greatly influenced by the systems of the Soviet Union. The political and social unrest after the war greatly affected the people of Poland, and it was during this challenging time that the artist Kazimierz Korczak-Mleczko was approached by Kazimierz Szafrańska to paint a portrait of his wife, Zofia Szafrańska.

Flux Art Conservation had the pleasure of conserving this portrait and interviewing Zofia’s daughter about her life, her mother and the importance of the portrait to the family.

The sitter

Zofia was born in 1915 in Warsaw, Poland. She grew up in a multi-generational home with her parents and grandparents, where she continued to live after her marriage to Kazimierz Szafrańska, and the couple raised their two daughters there. The home is remembered by Zofia’s youngest daughter, Margaret, as “always having an open door for anyone to enter - it was a lively place where neighbors and friends gathered in the evenings for meals and conversations.” In the years between the wars, Poland flourished. During the carnival season between Christmas Day and Lent, Zofia would spend her weekends attending balls - she loved dancing, entertaining and enjoying life. Margaret remembers her mother as a strong and loving woman who would do anything for her family and those around her.

In 1942 Zofia married Kazimierz Szafrańska, a well-educated pharmacist with a passion for learning – he was fluent in Latin, a lover of the wilderness, and a patron of the arts. Kazimierz owned his own pharmacy, where Zofia would help with day-to-day activities and run errands for her husband. He also worked part-time as an adjunct professor in the pharmacological department at the local university. As a child Kazimierz had polio, which left him with a slightly shorter left leg, resulting in a limp that was not very noticeable but required him to wear special orthopedic shoes. Kazimierz was a dedicated husband and father who put his family’s safety and education first. Margaret recalls a visit to the Warsaw Royal Castle with her father after the famed Jagiellonian tapestries were returned to Poland from Canada where they were stored for safe keeping during WWII.

Following a raid by the communist authorities under a belief that the family was living a bourgeois lifestyle, they were left with hardly anything but the clothes on their back and whatever Zofia’s parents convinced the authorities had belonged to them. Following the raid, Kazimierz lost employment and ownership of his pharmacy. Shortly after in the early 1960’s, Kazimierz Szafrańska emigrated to Cape Town, South Africa to avoid being courted by the communist regime and to keep his family safe. Six months later Zofia emigrated with her young children, with the equivalent of 15$ in today’s currency. The group traveled from Warsaw to Belgium to Rome to Sudan to Johannesburg to Cape Town, where Zofia and her daughters were reunited with Kazimierz. While the family lived in South Africa, most of their belongings, including the Portrait of Zofia Szafrańska, stayed with Zofia’s family in Warsaw.

When Kazimierz Szafrańska passed away from cancer in 1967, the family fell on hard times and had to sell some of their belongings – including another painting by the same artist as Zofia’s portrait. Without her husband to support the family, Zofia, who had experience working in Poland at her husband’s pharmacy and in South Africa as a stay-at-home mom, used the skills she had in cooking to work in hotels managing kitchens.

After the passing of her husband Zofia became sick - the grief, nerves and stress causing her to develop ulcers. By 1973 she asked Margaret, her youngest daughter to move with her back to Warsaw – even though the country still under communist rule. Zofia’s physical and mental health improved greatly when she was in her home country surrounded by friends and family in the same multi-generation home she grew up in, and this time with her daughter. In June of 1988 Zofia and her daughter spent 3 months in Paris, France before settling in New Jersey, USA, bringing the Portrait of Zofia with them.

The artist

The artist, Kazimierz Korczak-Mleczko (1900-1967), was born in Dąbie, in the Włocławek district of Poland. In 1915, at just 15 years old, he enlisted in the Polish Legions and was sent to the 1st Cavalry Regiment due to his young age. In the Legions he was among a group of over 70 artists - perhaps this is where he got his interest in painting. During this time, he was a member of various artist groups including the Society of Polish Artists “Sztuka”. Later in his life he fought in WWII with the Home Army and in 1945 joined as a member of The Association of Polish Artists and Designers (ZPAP); he was featured in their 10th Exhibition of Warsaw’s chapter of ZPAP in 1964. The handful of paintings found through online research appear to be portraits and landscapes. The family of Zofia Szafrańska currently own 3 works by Kazimierz Korczak-Mleczko.

The Treatment

When the Portrait of Zofia Szafrańska was brought to Flux Art Conservation by Margaret, the sitter’s daughter, it was in stable condition but had suffered a scratch on the face and some small losses throughout that dulled the colors and distracted from the portrait. When talking to Margaret she explained that the family sought out conservation because she had “always had this painting in my house because it was very much valued to us, but it was never made a terrible deal of by her (Zofia),” and “it had gone through some rough housing during the multiple moves”. She explained that the portrait of her mother is “of such emotional value now that it is not only something that I have, but a memory, a souvenir of my mom,” and is one example of how Zofia was “very much loved by my father, why else would he want to commission a painting of her and, I think, shows his interest in the arts and how he must have known that artist”. The family is having the Portrait of Zofia professionally reframed and preserved to pass down through future generations, to remember Zofia and Kazimierz and the love they had for each other, their family, and their country.

The first step taken was a round of before treatment (BT) photography which consisted of photos of the front, back and tacking margins, in normal, specular, and raking illuminations. Following photography, we created thorough written documentation evaluating the condition and proposed treatment steps. Treatment began with dry cleaning with soft brushes and cosmetic sponges to rid the surface of the dust and grime that had accumulated over many years. This step removed nearly all dirt making it unnecessary to do additional cleaning with aqueous solutions or solvents. We applied a thin varnish to the entire surface to saturate the colors, protect the paint, and act as a barrier for the inpainting which was needed on the scratch and microscopic losses. The fraying edges of the canvas were trimmed and secured with an application of adhesive as needed to limit the chances of snagging or further fraying. Finally, we documented the treatment with our reports and a round of after treatment photography (AT).