Hands
A sheet with sketches by the leading Polish symbolist Stanisław Wyspiański (created perhaps at the same time as his drawing The Soul of the Heroes, reproduced by Moderní revue magazine in the late 1890s) contains, in addition to the eye and the wings of birds, four detailed studies of a hand gripping a rod, which combine partial – diverse – sketches into a unified whole. Thanks to the marked variability of detail, these limbs also exude their own intelligence. The hand “grabbing” the object symbolizes understanding, and the image of human hands “clasped into a magic chain”, the central motif of Otokar Březina’s last collection of poems, aptly represents universal brotherhood, an ideal praised not only by contemporary artists, but also by philosophers and sociologists.
| Author: | Březina, Otokar |
| Title: | Hands |
| Date: | 1916 |
| Licence: | Free license |