The distinguished sculptor Henryk (Henoch) Glicenstein was born in Turek, 30 km away from Konin, in 1870. "The town of Turek for me was the hub of the universe" - this is how this superb sculptor and draftsman viewed the town of his birth during his childhood. However, today he is forgotten in Poland, the country to which he often returned in his memories and artistic works.
December 30, 1992 marked the 50th anniversary of the artist's death. On this occasion the District Museum in Konin prepared an exhibition devoted to his life and works. The exhibition aroused much interest in the artist, which resulted in the permanent exhibition "Born in Turek: Henryk Henoch Glicenstein", housed by the Museum. Organizing the exhibition was not an easy task, mainly because Polish museum collections included only eight of his sculptures, one oil painting, and two drawings. In the early 1990s it seemed that there were only a few works in private hands: a plaster cast of Messiah, Glicenstein's gift to the architect and painter Witold Marwege after their mutual exhibition in "Zachęta" (Messiah was later purchased by the authorities of Turek and placed in the local Museum) and a plaque representing the father of Izabela (née Herz) Czajka-Stachowicz. A significant number of the artist's previous works were either lost or destroyed during World War I. This fact was surely the reason for the scarcity of the works in Polish collections. With such a limited number of works to exhibit we decided to depict the artist as a sensitive man, maintaining a strong emotional contact with his native Poland. This intention could be implemented thanks to the kindness and assistance of the artist's son-in-law, Hugo Dreyfuss, and Charlotte Sholod of the Dreyfuss/Glicenstein Foundation in New York, from whom we have received a precious gift of four drawings by the artist done in the years 1929-1930, also five watercolors, twenty-nine other drawings, and one bas-relief in wood. We have also been lent letters and autobiographical memoirs from the artist's childhood. Moreover, we have been sent heretofore completely unknown materials relating to Glicenstein himself.
The interest in Glicenstein was born out of coincidence: the employees of the District Museum in Konin between 1989-1990 in the Turek area secured a few hundred whole and fragmentally preserved Jewish tombstones. While the tombstones were being conserved and documented, the signature of the stonemason I. Glicenstein was discovered on one of them, and so the adventure of searching for the traces of the prominent Turek resident, still ongoing within and outside the country, began. The earliest recorded evidence of the sculptor's father's family was found in the archival materials related to the town of Dobra, located over ten kilometers from Turek. The Glicenstein family is presented here as merchants and stallholders. The artist's grandparents had become wealthy through trade in corn, wood, and wool. Their business activity reached as far as Gdańsk and Leipzig. Their only worry was the lack of a male descendant, and so they visited sacred places, giving generous alms. Finally, they named a much-welcomed heir Ichoszi Alter, and the monetary equivalent of the infant's weight was given away to the poor. Early orphaned by his mother, the child grew up to become a fervently pious man, who brought up his six children to observe strictly the rules of their tradition. Henoch's father was a good and loving man, often helping the poor, sometimes at the expense of his own family. The father could notice that Henoch, a delicate and vulnerable child, differed from his peers and siblings. He would take his son for long hiking trips during which they visited old cemeteries and discovered the overall charm of the local landscape.
The artist's mother's name was Raja Berkowicz. Her family was recorded in the first census of the Jewish families already possessing a permanent last name in 1821 and settled in Turek. Her mother, a gifted and beautiful woman, greatly influenced her grandson. Together, Henoch's mother and grandmother passed on to the young boy their personal memories relating to hopes for Polish independence, especially vivid during the Napoleonic period and the January Uprising. The child heard stories about Napoleon's army passing through Turek and about the heroes of the 1863 Uprising. With particular emotion the artist recalled playing with his peers in the main town square, around a hollow tree, which was sacred to the residents of Turek, for under that tree an insurgent was murdered on December 21, 1863.
Henoch was brought up in the atmosphere of this small town where Jewish and Polish traditions and cultures met. He carefully watched the life of his native Turek, marveling at Catholic processions and funerals passing through the town marketplace and recalled bustling expeditions to Henoch Kuliszer School on Kaliska Street. He was emotionally affected by solitary walks in the forests, which resulted in his first sculptures made of found branches. The earliest memories of his happy childhood are related to sculptures. The first toys for Henoch and his siblings were made by his father. In the garden belonging to his maternal grandparents there lay some greystone blocks used by Ichoszi Alter to make tombstones. In a short time, ten-year-old Henoch began assisting his father to make lions, candlesticks, and blessing hands on these very stones. Throughout his childhood he attended synagogue services. He especially liked the old synagogue in Dobra, where he gazed in wonderment at the paintings on the ceiling illustrating Chasidic stories. There he found a different world, the world of dreams and mysticism. This wonderful world of his childhood collapsed one night along with his grandparents' old house, when a huge fire ravaged the town. In this situation the father had to find an additional source of income - he began teaching children.
Soon thereafter, at only 13 years of age, Henoch started his independent life. He left his family and for four years wandered from town to town making his living by carving toys, chess pieces, and walking-stick handles. Wandering led him to Kalisz for a year. In 1887 he reached Łódź, where he worked for various craftsmen using his skills: he painted signboards, made walking-stick handles and carved furniture elements for a carpenter. He lived at his uncle's, who worked in a Talmudic school. All his free time was devoted to drawing and sculpture. Making human figures became a source of conflict with his uncle, who espoused the biblical injunction against depicting man's likeness. Thanks to the school headmaster he found some protectors, the Jakubowicz sisters in particular, who taught him to write in Polish and German, introduced him to arithmetic, led him to the threshold of local society and the artistic world. The gifted boy then caught the interest of the publisher of the "Dziennik Łódzki" and several art critics. An important event in his life was meeting Samuel Hirszenberg, who along with Maurycy Gottleib, studied with Matejko. Henoch was invited to the Hirszenbergs' house; this made a great impression on him. Never before had he been to the house of the artistic elite of a large city; he was thrilled by the works he found there and the special cultural atmosphere. This is where he met Samuel's sister Helena, who became his faithful and lifetime friend. For seven long years during the artist's studies she waited for him until they could finally marry.
In 1890 his mentors sent Glicenstein to study in Munich, awarding him a scholarship of 15 marks. At the Munich Academy Henoch's mentor was Prof. Wilhelm von Rümann. Under his guidance the first work of the artist - Skeptic - was created. This period of studies was a series of successes for the young sculptor. He was considered to be the greatest talent at the Academy; there was no exhibition, no contest, where he would not take the leading place. For Skeptic he already received a silver medal in 1892. The financial means attending this prize permitted him to return to Poland and deal with the formalities concerning exemption from military service. Again, in Munich in 1893, he won first prize for the sculpture Narcissus; soon thereafter, at the competition in Lvov, he received second prize for an unnamed bust.
The year 1895 closes the period of the artist's studies at the Munich Academy, crowned with his winning the school's highest medal. For the sculpture Arion that same year he received an honorable mention and the prestigious Prix de Rome, allowing the artist to leave for a year of study in the Italian capital. Here his artistic creativity was gradually moving away from standard patterns of beauty and classical forms represented by such works as Arion and Narcissus. In his Rome atelier he was visited by Prof. Joseph von Kopf, who prepared an album devoted to the most prominent works of contemporary visual arts. He examined and photographed Glicenstein's works, expressing his impressions with the following words: "There are many sculptors but few artists."
The works Glicenstein created in Rome were later shown at the Berlin Academy; for his After Work It Is Good to Rest he received the Prix de Rome for another year of study in Rome. After completing his first year in Italy, where he had enjoyed success and glory, he had come back to Łódź. Unfortunately, his visit to our country remained unnoticed. In spite of previous promises, he was not given any commissions for new works.
Disappointed, he left Poland together with Helena Hirszenberg, whom he married in December 1896 in Łódź, and returned to Rome. He began working on the sculpture Melancholy at which Count Stroganoff so marveled as to purchase it even before it was transformed from its unfinished clay form into a permanent bronze cast. This event became an incentive for further work. Thus, Glicenstein started the realization of a new group, Destiny, which in 1897 received the second prize at a contest in Warsaw. Simultaneously, he created the sculpture Cain and Abel, also called The First Death. This larger-than-life, two-figured bronze made a great impression on all who saw it, as Cain was the embodiment of hatred dividing people, nations, and religions.
In a short time he made the sculptures Worried Mother and Wanderer. In 1900 he left for Paris for the World Exhibition, where he received a silver medal for the group Cain and Abel. Having returned to Rome, he then started modeling the sculpture Lamenting Orpheus and the bust of his brother-in-law, Samuel Hirszenberg. The latter was purchased by the National Museum in Krakow.
During the first few years of the 20th century, when the artist's reputation was becoming established, he received commissions for numerous portrait busts, including those of Dr. Ludwig Pollak, Dimitri Nelidoff, who was the son of the Russian ambassador to Rome, and Count Grigory Stroganoff. During this same period, he was working as well on the following sculptures: Circe, Before the Storm, the group Sphinx, plus several ornamental bronze vases. As early as 1903, the young artist's fame elicited an invitation from the Italian politician and poet, Gabriele D'Annunzio to model his bust (in 1905 he received a gold medal for this work in Munich). At the same time, Glicenstein created a portrait bust of D'Annunzio's eleven-year-old daughter. It was this sculpture that August Rodin (1840-1917), the most prominent French sculptor of his day, placed next to his own famous Le Penseur (The Thinker)in the great central rotunda at the 1904 spring Salon in Paris. Between the years 1903 - 1906, Glicenstein labored over his sculpture Messiah, a work he had long intended to create as a symbol of the tragedy and suffering of Jews throughout thousands of years. Soon after this iconic work was completed, Messiah was exhibited in Paris at the 1907 Salon, where Rodin surely must have noticed this larger-than-life-sized sleeping figure, for it was shortly thereafter that the French master appointed Glicenstein a member of the French National Society of Fine Arts.
Throughout his stay abroad Glicenstein kept in touch with his family in Poland and with Polish artistic life. In 1909 he made a sketch for the project of the monument of Chopin in Warsaw. A year later he was appointed to the department of sculpture at the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw (after X. Dunikowski), but soon he resigned from this nomination. Meanwhile, Glicenstein lived permanently in Rome with his wife Helena, son Emanuel (born in 1897), and daughter Beatrice (born in 1901). The artist's friend - Dimitri Nelidov, Russian Chargé d'Affaires to the Vatican - organized an exhibition for him in Petersburg in 1914. The outbreak of war made it impossible for Glicenstein to return to his family or to reach Russia. Thus, the period between 1914-1917 was spent in Łódź and Warsaw. The impulsive and sensitive artist did not remain passive - he preserved everything he could see. It was then that hundreds of poignant drawings were created, many of which would be reflected in his sculptures in the years to come. He drew, helped the wounded, interceded with German authorities on behalf of people unknown to him. He sent moving letters, written in Polish, to his family, expressing his deep concern about their fate. From these letters we can learn about his works which have unfortunately been lost or destroyed: Icarus, Samson, and the portrait of the poet and shoemaker Hans Sachs.
In 1914 he exhibited at an autumn salon at the Zachęta, and a year later at a spring salon. There he presented works inspired by his war experiences. His drawings and sculptures shocked visitors, and he received great recognition in the artistic world of Warsaw. At the autumn salon in Zachęta in 1914 he exhibited, among others, the bust of Samuel Hirszenberg. From the artist's letters it can be established that in 1915 he exhibited his works in two halls of the Zachęta. In one of them he displayed drawings and paintings, and in the other, sculptures. Among the sculptures there were Sunworshipper, Old Woman, Messiah, Prophet, Ruth and Boas, and Sybil.
At the outset of the war he visited his family, as he was extremely worried about his mother. Unfortunately, he did not arrive in Turek since he had been robbed in Kalisz (he mentions this fact in one of his letters). Between 1915-1916 we find him designing a monument dedicated to the victims of war in Kalisz. Then, throughout his stay in Warsaw, he worked on the following sculptures: Mother and Child (bronze 1915) and Fugitives (wood 1915). While in Warsaw, Glicenstein maintained lively and close relationships with the local intelligentsia; for instance, he was a friend of the father of Izabela (née Herz) Stachowicz-Czajka. "Mr. Henryk" appears throughout the pages of her memoirs, The Daughter of A Witch on a Swing. Glicenstein made sketches for a portrait of Mr. Herz and painted a watercolor portrait of the author in shades of light blue.
In 1917 a German Governor of Warsaw permitted him to leave first for Berlin (where he produced a portrait of the philosopher Hermann Cohen) and then for Switzerland, where his family was waiting for him. The four Glicensteins returned to Italy in 1921 and lived there together until 1928, except for a brief interlude between 1921-1924 when Henryk resided in London. A series of his drypoint etchings entitled The Book of Samuel was purchased by the Department of Prints and Drawings of the British Museum. After his return to Italy, he created, among others, portraits of King Victor Emanuel, Pope Pius XI, and Mussolini. His encounter with Mussolini influenced the artist's fate tremendously - he fell into conflict with the dictator and was forced to leave Italy in 1928. Together with his son Emanuel, a painter who adopted the pseudonym Romano, he left for the United States and settled in New York. Helena Glicenstein with her daughter was granted permission to join her husband only in 1935.
Between 1928 and 1934 the artist carved a bust of Abraham Lincoln and modeled portraits of Ignacy Paderewski, the Mayor of New York James Walker, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and others. He made sculptures and plaques of various formats and materials: stone, bronze, plaster, terracotta; sometimes he combined various materials. But it was wood that became his favorite medium. This material best suited his artistic temperament. Frozen, architectonic figures may be enlivened by the texture of the surface. The artist here used the play of light to breathe motion into seemingly static sculptures.
It is hard to say why at the twilight of his life, perhaps under the influence of his memories and nostalgia for the country of his childhood, some of his sculptures amaze us with their closeness to Polish folk art. Such sculptures as Cat and Man with Hat can be invariably associated with the devil Boruta. While wandering between Turek and Łódź as a young man, the artist must have surely come across folk creators. The war, the tragedy of the Jewish nation - all this was reflected in his last works: Ecce Homo, Wounded Soldier, National Defense, De Profundis, as well as in numerous drawings. On December 30, 1942, the artist died in a car accident near his home in Sunnyside, New York.
The District Museum in Konin continues to collect materials related to the artist. It is interesting that in our country there still remain a few completely unknown works of Glicenstein. In 1998 we managed to acquire the oil painting Landscape of Liguria, created in 1911, as well as a bronze bust of a young woman, probably his wife Helena, signed Roma 1896 H. Glicenstein - Barami.
In the early 1990s the Museum saved a few hundred tombstones from a destroyed Jewish cemetery in Turek. As we said earlier, among a few hundred whole and fragmented tombstones preserved, we found one signed by the artist's father, who was both a teacher in a cheder (a religious primary school for Jewish boys) and a stonemason. It was this discovery that launched our long-lasting studies on the Polish stage of Glicenstein's artistic creativity. We made contact with the Dreyfuss/Glicenstein Foundation in New York City established by the artist's son-in-law Hugo Dreyfuss. The Foundation donated to our Museum a collection of the sculptor's works: drawings, watercolors, and a bas-relief. Charlotte Sholod, the curator of the Glicenstein archives, has been cooperating with the Museum for many years, handing over materials related to the artist, enriching the Museum's archives, used by both students and scholars.
The gift from the Foundation in New York has been completed by two works purchased by the Museum - the 1896 portrait bust of a young woman and the 1911 painting, Landscape of Liguria. A permanent exhibition devoted to the artist includes works on loan from the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, the Zamek Królewski in Warsaw, and the Muzeum Rzemiosła Tkackiego in Turek.

by Łucja Pawlicka Nowak, PhD.